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LIFE n THE OPEN AIR, 



KATAHDIN AND THE PENOBSCOT, 






CONTENTS. 

Pagb 

Life in the Open Air. — Katahdin and the 

Penobscot ....... 1 

Love and Skates . . . . . 121 

New York Seventh Kegiment. — Our March 

to Washington 21 1 

Washington as a Camp .... 253 

Fortress Monroe 291 

Brightly's Orphan. — A Fragment . . 303 

" The Heart of the Andes '' . '. . 329 



LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 



CHAPTER I. 
OFF. 



At five P. M. we found ourselves — Iglesias, a 
party of friends, and myself — on board the Isaac 
Newton, a great, ugly, three-tiered box that walks 
the North River, like a laboratory of greasy odors. 

In this stately cinder-mill were American citizens. 
Not to discuss spitting, which is for spittoons, not 
literature, our fellow-travellers on the deck of the 
"floating palace " were passably endurable people 
in looks, style, and language. I dodge discrimina- 
tion, and characterize th^em en masse by negations. 
The passengers of the Isaac Newton, on a certain 
evening of July, 18 — , were not so intrusively 
green and so gasping as Britons, not so ill-dressed 
and pretentious as Gauls, not so ardently futile and 
so lubberly as Germans. Such were the negative 
virtues of our fellow-citizen travellers ; and base 
would it be to exhibit their positive vices. 

And so no more of passengers or passage. I 
will not describe our evening on the river. Alas 
for the duty of straightforwardness and dramatic 



4 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

unity ! Episodes seem so often sweeter than plots ! 
The wayside joys are better than the final suc- 
cesses ; the flowers along the vista, brighter than 
the victor-wreaths at its close. I may not dally 
on my way, turning to the right and the left for 
beauty and caricature. I will balance on the strict 
edge of my narrative, as a seventh-heavenward Ma- 
hometan, with wine-forbidden steadiness of poise, 
treads Al Serat, his bridge of a sword-blade. 

Next morning, at Albany, divergent trains cleft 
our party into a better and a worser half. The 
beautiful girls, our better half, fled westward to 
ripen their pallid roses with richer summer-hues in 
mosquitoless inland dells. Iglesias and I were still 
northward bound. 

At the Saratoga station we sipped a dreary, faded 
reminiscence of former joys and sparkling brilliancy 
long dead, in cups of Congress-water, brought by 
unattractive Ganymedes and sold in the train, — 
draughts flat, flabby, and utterly bubbleless, luke- 
warm heel-taps with a flavor of savorless salt. 

Still northward journeying, and feeling the sea- 
side moisture evaporate from our blood under in- 
land suns and sultry inland breezes, we came to 
Lake Champlain. 

As before banquets, to excite appetite, one takes 
the gentle oyster, so we, before the serious pleasure 
of our journey, tasted the Adirondack region, para- 
dise of Cockney sportsmen. There, through the 
forest, the stag of ten trots, coquetting with green- 
horns. He likes the excitement of being shot at 



OFF. 



and missed. He enjoys the smell of powder in a 
battle where he is always safe. He hears Green- 
horn blundering through the woods, stopping to 
growl at briers, stopping to revive his courage 
with the Dutch supplement. The stag of ten 
awaits his foe in a glade. The foe arrives, sees the 
antlered monarch, and is panic-struck. He watches 
him prance and strike the ground with his hoofs. 
He' slowly recovers heart, takes a pull at his flask, 
rests his gun upon a log, and begins to study his 
mark. The stag will not stand still. Greenhorn 
is baffled. At last his target turns and carefully 
exposes that region of his body where Greenhorn 
has read lies the heart. Just about to fire, he 
catches the eye of the stag winking futility into his 
elaborate aim. His blunderbuss jerks upward. A 
shower of cut leaves floats through the smoke, 
from a tree thirty feet overhead. Then, with a 
mild-eyed melancholy look of reproachful contempt, 
the stag turns away, and wanders off to sleep in 
quiet coverts far within the wood. He has fled, 
while for Greenhorn no trophy remains. Antlers 
have nodded to the sportsman ; a short tail has 
disappeared before his eyes ; — he has seen some- 
thing, but has nothing to show. Whereupon he 
buys a couple of pairs of ancient weather-bleached 
horns from some colonist, and, nailing them up at 
impossible angles on the wall ©f his city den, hum- 
bugs brother-Cockneys with tales of veneiHe, and has 
for life his special legend, " How I shot my first deer 
in the Adirondacks." 



6 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

The Adirondacks provide a compact, convenient, 
accessible little wilderness, — an excellent field for 
the experiments of tyros. When the tyro, whether 
shot; fisherman, or forester, has proved himself 
fully there, let him dislodge into some vaster 
wilderness, away from guides by the day and 
superintending hunters, away from the incursions 
of the Cockney tribe, and let out the caged savage 
within him for a tough struggle with Nature. It 
needs a struggle tough and resolute to force that 
Protean lady to observe at all her challenger. 

It is well to go to the Adirondacks. They are 
shaggy, and shagginess is a valuable trait. The 
lakes are very well, — very well indeed. The ob- 
jection to the region is not the mountains, which 
are reasonably shaggy, — not the lakes and rivers, 
which are water, a capital element. The real diflS- 
culty is the society : not the autochthonous society, 
— they are worthy people, and it is hardly to be 
mentioned as a fault that they are not a discrimi- 
nating race, and will asseverate that all fish are 
trout, and the most arrant mutton is venison, — 
but the immigrant, colonizing society. Cockneys 
are to be found at every turn, flaunting their ban- 
ners of the awkward squad, proclaiming to the 
world with protuberant pride that they are the 
veritable backwoodsmen, — rather doing it, rather 
astonishing the natives, they think. And so they 
are. One squad of such neophytes might be enter- 
taining ; but when every square mile echoes with 
their hails, lost, poor babes, within a furlong of 



OFF. 



their camps, and when the woods become dim and 
the air civic with their cooking-smokes, and the 
subtile odor of fried pork overpowers methylic 
fragrance among the trees, then he who loves 
forests for their solitude leaves these brethren to 
their clumsy joys, and wanders elsewhere deeper 
into sylvan scenes. 

Our visit to the Adirondacks was episodic ; and 
as I have forsworn episodes, I turn away from them 
with this mild slander, and strike again our Maine 
track. With lips impurpled by the earliest huckle- 
berries, we came out again upon Champlain. We 
crossed that water-logged valley in a steamboat, 
and hastened on, through .a pleasant interlude of 
our rough journey, across Vermont and New Hamp- 
shire, two States not without interest to their resi- 
dents, but of none to this narrative. 

By coach and wagon, by highway and by-way, 
by horse-power and steam-power, we proceeded, 
until it chanced, one August afternoon, that we 
left railways and their regions at a wayside station, 
and let our lingering feet march us along the valley 
of the Upper Connecticut. This lovely river, bap- 
tizer of Iglesias's childhood, was here shallow and 
musical, half river, half brook ; it had passed the 
tinkling period, and plashed and rumbled voicefully 
over rock and shallow. 

It was a fair and verdant valley where we walked, 
overlooked by hills of pleasant pastoral slope. All 
the land was gay and ripe with yellow harvest. 
Strolling along, as if the business of travel were 



8 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIE. 

forgotten, we placidly identified ourselves with the 
placid scenery. We became Arcadians both. Such 
is Arcadia, if I have read aright : a realm where 
sunshine never scorches, and yet shade is sweet ; 
where simple pleasures please ; where the blue sky 
and the bright water and the green fields satisfy 
forever. 

We were in lightest marching-trim. Iglesias 
bore an umbrella, our armor against what heaven 
could do with assault of sun or shower. I was 
weaponed with a staff", should brute or biped un- 
courteous dispute our way. We had no impedi- 
ments of " great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and 
bundle." A thoughtful man hardly feels honest in 
his life except as a pedestrian traveller. " La pro- 
prHete c'est le vol/' — which the West more briefly 
expresses hy calling baggage " plunder.'^ What 
little plunder our indifferent honesty had packed 
for this journey we had left with a certain stage- 
coachman, perhaps to follow us, perhaps to become 
his plunder. We were thus disconnected from 
any depressing influence ; we had no character to 
sustain ; we were heroes in disguise, and could 
make our observations on life and manners with- 
out being invited to a public hand-shaking, or to 
exhibit feats in jugglery, for either of which a 
traveller jvith plenteous portmanteaus, hair or 
leather, must be prepared in villages thereabouts. 
Totally unembarrassed, we lounged along or 
leaped along, light-hearted. When the river neared 
us, or winsome brooklet from the hill-side thwarted 



OFF. 



our path^ we stooped and lapped from their pools 
of coolness, or tasted that most ethereal tipple, 
the mingled air and water of electric bubbles, as 
they slid brightly toward our lips. 

The angle of the sun's rays grew less and less, 
the wheat-fields were tinged more golden by the 
clinging beams, our shadows lengthened, as if 
exercise of an afternoon were stimulating to such 
unreal essences. Finally the blue dells and gorges 
of a wooded mountain, for two hours our landmark, 
rose between us and the sun. But the sun's Par- 
thian arrows gave him a splendid triumph, more 
signal for its evanescence. A storm was inevitable, 
and sunset prepared a reconciling pageant. 

Now, as may be supposed, Iglesias has an eye 
for a sunset. That summer's crop had been very 
short, and he had been some time on starvation- 
allowance of cloudy magnificence. We therefore 
halted by the road-side, and while I committed the 
glory to memory, Iglesias intrusted his distincter 
memorial to a sketch-book. 

We were both busy, he repeating forms, noting 
shades and tints, and I studying without pictorial 
intent, when we heard a hail in the road below our 
bank. It was New Hampshire, near the Maine 
line, and near the spot where nasal organs are fab- 
ricated that twang the roughest. 

" Say ! " shrieked up to us a freckled native, 
holding fast to the tail of a calf, the last of a gam- 
bolling family he was driving, — "Say! whodger 

doon up thurr ? Layn aoot taoonshup lains naoou, 
1* 



10 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 



aancher ? Gauds ur suvvares raoond, Spekkle- 
ayshn goan on, ur guess. '^ 

We allowed this uumelodious vocalist to respect 
us by permitting him to believe us surveyors in 
another sense than as we were. One would not be 
despised as an unpractical citizen, a mere looker 
at Nature with no immediate view to profit, even 
by a freckled calf-driver of the Upper Connecticut. 
While we parleyed, the sketch was done, and the 
pageant had faded quiek before the storm. 

Splendor had departed ; the world in our neigh- 
borhood had fallen into the unillumined dumps. 
An ominous mournfulness, far sadder than the pen- 
siveness of twilight, drew over the sky. Clouds, 
that donned brilliancy for the fond parting of moun- 
tain-tops and the sun, now grew cheerless and 
gray ; their gay robes were taken from them, and 
with bended heads they fled away from the sor- 
rowful wind. In western glooms beyond the world 
a dreary gale had been born, and now came wailing 
like one that for all his weariness may not rest, but 
must go on harmful journeys and bear evil tidings. 
With the vanguard gusts came volleys of rain, ma- 
licious assaults, giving themselves the trouble to 
tell us in an offensive way what we could discover 
for ourselves, that a wetting impended and um- 
brellas would soon be naught. 

While the storm was thus nibbling before it bit, 
we lengthened our strides to escape. Water, con- 
centrated in flow of stream or pause of lake, is 
charming ; not so to the shelterless is water diflused 



OFF. 11 

in dash of deluge. Water, when we choose our 
method of contact, is a friend ; when it masters 
us, it is a foe ; when it drowns us or ducks us, a 
very exasperating foe. Prouc^ pedestrians become 
very humble personages, when thoroughly van- 
quished by a ducking deluge. A wetting takes out 
the starch not only from garments, but the wearers 
of them. Iglesias and I did not wish to stand all 
the evening steaming before a kitchen-fire, inspect- 
ing meanwhile culinary details : Phillis in the kitch- 
en is not always as fresh as Phillis in the field. 
We therefore shook ourselves into full speed, and 
bolted into our inn at Colebrook ; and the rain, like 
a portcullis, dropped solid behind us. 

In town, the landlord is utterly merged in his 
hotel. He is a sovereign rarely apparent. In the 
country, the landlord is a personality. He is 
greater than the house he keeps. Men arriving 
inspect the master of the inn narrowly. If his 
first glance is at the pocket, cheer will be bad ; if 
at the eyes or the lips, you need not take a cigar 
before supper to keep down your appetite. 

Our landlord was of the latter type. He surged 
out of the little box where he was dispensing not 
too fragrant rummers to a circle of village-politi- 
cians, and congratulated us on our arrival before 
the storm. He was a discriminating person. He 
detected us at once, saw we were not tramps or 
footpads, and led us to the parlor, a room attrac- 
tively furnished with a map of the United States 
and an oblong music-book open at " Old Hundred.'^ 



12 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

Our host further felicitated us that we had not 
stopped at a certain tavern below, where, as he 
said, — 

" They cut a chu^k er beef and drop 't into a 
pot to bile, and bile her three days, and then don't 
have noth'n' else for three weeks." 

He put his head out of the door and called, — 

" George, go aoot and split up that 'ere wood as 
fine as chaowder : these men '11 want their supper 
right off." 

Drawing in his head, he continued to us confi- 
dentially, — 

" That 'ere George is jes' like a bird : he goes 
ofi" at one snappin'." 

Our host then rolled out toward the bar-room, to 
discuss with his cronies who we might be. From 
the window we perceived the birdlike George fly 
and alight near the specified wood, which he pro- 
ceeded to bechowder. He brought in the result 
of his handiwork, as smiling as a basket of chips. 
Neat-handed Phillis at the door received the chow- 
der, and by its aid excited a sound and a smell, 
both prophetic of supper. And we, willing to re- 
pose after a sixteen-mile afternoon-walk, lounged 
upon sofa or tilted in rocking-chair, taking the 
available mental food, namely, " Godey's Lady's 
Book " and the Almanac. 



GOHMING AND GETTING ON. 13 



CHAPTER II. 
GORMING AND GETTING ON. 

Next morning it poured. The cinders before 
the blacksmith's shop opposite had yielded their 
black dye to the dismal puddles. The village cocks 
were sadly draggled and discouraged, and cowered 
under any shelter, shivering within their drowned 
plumage. Who on such a morn would stir ? Who 
but the Patriot ? Hardly had we breakfasted, 
when he, the Patriot, waited upon us. It was a 
Presidential campaign. They were starving in his 
village for stump-speeches. Would the talking 
man of our duo go over and feed their ears with a 
fiery harangue ? Patriot was determined to be 
first with us ; others were coming with similar 
invitations ; he was the early bird. Ah, those 
portmanteaus ! they had arrived, and betrayed us. 

We would not be snapped up. We would wrig- 
gle away. We were very sorry, but we must start 
at once to pursue our journey. 

" But it pours,^' said Patriot. 

'' Patriot,'^ replied our talking member, " man is 
flesh ; and flesh, however sweet or savory it may 
be, does not melt in water.'' 

Thus fairly committed to start, we immediately 
opened negotiations for a carriage. " No go,'' 
was the first response of the coachman. Our willy 
was met by his nilly. But we pointed out to him 



14 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

that we could not stay there all a dismal day, — 
that we must, would, could, should go. At last 
we got within coachee's outworks. His nilly broke 
down into shilly-shally. He began to state his ob- 
jections ; then we knew he was ready to yield. 
We combated him, clinking the supposed gold of 
coppers in our pockets, or carelessly chucking a 
tempting half-dollar at some fly on the ceil big. So 
presently we prevailed, and he retired to make 
ready. 

By and by a degraded family-carriage came to 
the door. It came by some feeble inertia left latent 
in it by some former motive-power, rather than was 
dragged up by its more degraded nags. A very 
unwholesome coach. No doubt a successful quack- 
doctor had used it in his prosperous days for his 
wife and progeny ; no doubt it had subsequently 
become the property of a second-class undertaker, 
and had conveyed many a quartette of cheap cler- 
gymen to the funerals of poor relations whose 
leaking sands of life left no gold-dust behind. 
Such was our carriage for a rainy day. 

The nags were of the huckleberry or flea-bitten 
variety, — a freckled white. Perhaps the quack 
had fed them with his refuse pills. These knobby- 
legged unfortunates we of course named Xanthus 
and Balius, not of podargous or swift-footed, but 
podagrous or gouty race. Xanthus, like his Achil- 
lean namesake, (vide Pope's Homer,) 

" Seemed sensible of woe, and dropped his head, — 
Trembling he stood before the (seedy) wain." 



GOKMING AND GETTrNG ON. 15 

Balius was in equally deplorable mood. Both seemed 
more sensible to "Whoa " than to " Hadaap.'' Po- 
dagrous beasts, yet not stifiened to immobility. 
Gayer steeds would have sundered the shackling 
drag. These would never, by any gamesome cara- 
coling, endanger the coherency of pole with body, 
of axle with wheel. From end to end the equi- 
page was congruous. Every part of the machine 
was its weakest part, and that fact gave promise 
of strength : an invalid never dies. Moreover, 
the coach suited the day : the rusty was in har- 
mony with the dismal. It suited the damp, un- 
painted houses, and the tumble-down blacksmith's- 
shop. We contented ourselves with this artistic 
propriety. We entered, treading cautiously. The 
machine, with gentle spasms, got itself in motion, 
and steered due east for Lake Umbagog. The 
smiling landlord, the disappointed Patriot, and the 
birdlike George waved us farewell. 

. Coachee was in the sulks. The rain beat upon 
him, and we by purse-power had compelled him to 
encounter discomfort. His self-respect must be 
restored by superiority over somebody. He had 
been beaten and must beat. He did so. His 
horses took the lash until he felt at peace with 
himself. Then half turning toward us, he made his 
first remark. 

" Them two bosses is germing.'^ 
" Yes,^' we replied, '* they do seem rather so.'' 
This was of course profound hypocrisy ; but 
*' germing " meant some bad quality, and any 



16 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

might be safely predicated of our huckleberry pair. 
Who will adrait that he does not know all that is to 
be known in horse-matters ? We therefore asked 
no questions, but waited patiently for information. 

Delay pays demurrage to the wisely patient. 
Coachee relapsed into the sulks. The -driving rain 
resolved itself into a dim chaos of mist. Xanthus 
and Balius plodded on, but often paused and gasped, 
or, turning their heads as if they missed some- 
thing, strayed from the track and drew us against 
the dripping bushes. After one such excursion, 
which had nearly been the ruin of us, and which 
by calling out coachee's scourging powers had put 
him thoroughly in good humor, he turned to us and 
said, superlatively, — 

"Them's the gormingest bosses I ever see. 
When I drew 'em in the four-hoss coach for 
wheelers, they could keep a straight tail. Now 
they act like they was drunk. They 's gorming, 
— they wonH do nothin^ witliout a leader.^' 

To gorm, then, is to err when there is no leader. 
Alas, how mankind gorms ! 

By sunless noon we were well among the moun- 
tains. We came to the last New Hampshire 
house, miles from its neighbors. But it was a self- 
sufficing house, an epitome of humanity. Grand- 
mamma, bald under her cap, was seated by the 
stove dandling grandchild, bald under its cap. 
Each was highly entertained with the other. Grand- 
papa was sandy with grandboy's gingerbread- 
crumbs. The intervening ages were well repro- 



GORMING AND GETTING ON. 17 

sented by wiry men and shrill women. The house, 
also, without being tavern or shop, was an amateur 
bazaar of vivers and goods. Anything one was 
likely to want could be had there, — even a melo- 
deon and those inevitable Patent-Office Reports. 
Here we descended, lunched, and providently 
bought a general assortment, namely, a large plain 
cake, five pounds of cheese, a ball of twine, and 
two pairs of brown ribbed woollen socks, native 
manufacture. My pair of these indestructible s 
will outlast my last legs and go as an heirloom 
after me. 

The weather now, as we drove on, seemed to 
think that Iglesias deserved better of it. Rain- 
globes strung upon branches, each globe the pos- 
sible home of a sparkle, had waited long enough 
unillumined. Sunlight suddenly discovered this 
desponding patience and rewarded it. Every drop 
selected its own ray from the liberal bundle, and, 
crowding itself full of radiance, became a mirror 
of sky and cloud and forest. Also, by the search- 
ing sunbeams' store of regal purple, ripe raspber- 
ries were betrayed. On these, magnified by their 
convex lenses of water, we pounced. Showers 
shook playfully upon us from the vines, while we 
revelled in fruitiness. We ran before our gormers, 
they gormed by us while we plucked, we ran by, 
plucked again, and again were gormingly overtaken 
and overtook. Thus we ate our way luxuriously 
through the Dixville Notch, a capital cleft in a north- 
(3rn spur of the White Mountains. 



18 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

Picturesque is a curiously convenient, undiscrim- 
inating epithet, I use it here. The Dixville Notch 
iS; briefly, picturesque, — a fine gorge between a 
crumbling conical crag and a scarjDed precipice, — 
a pass easily defensible, except at the season when 
raspberries would distract sentinels. 

Now we came upon our proper field of action. 
We entered the State of Maine at Township Letter 
B. A sharper harshness of articulation in stray 
passengers told us that we were approaching the 
vocal influence of the name Androscoggin. People 
talked as if, instead of ivory ring or coral rattle to 
develop their infantile teeth, they had bitten upon 
pine knots. Voices were resinous and astringent. 
An opera, with a chorus drummed up in those 
regions, could dispense with violins. 

Toward evening we struck the river, and found 
it rasping and crackling over rocks as an Andro- 
scoggin should. We passed the last hamlet, then 
the last house but one, and finally drew up at the 
last and northernmost house, near the lumbermen's 
dam below Lake Umbagog. The damster, a stal- 
wart brown chieftain of the backwoodsman race, 
received us with hearty hospitality. Xanthus and 
B alius stumbled away on their homeward journey. 
And after them the crazy coach went moaning : it 
was not strong enough to creak or rattle. 

Next day was rainy. It had, however, misty 
intervals. In these we threw a fly for trout and 
caught a chub in Androscoggin. Or, crouched on 
the bank of a frog-pond, we tickled frogs with 



GOEMING AND GETTING ON. 19 

straws. Yes, and fun of the freshest we found it. 
Certain animals, and especially frogs, were created, 
shaped, and educated to do the grotesque, that men 
might study them, laugh, and grow fat. It was a 
droll moment with Nature, when she entertained 
herself and prepared entertainment for us by de- 
vising the frog, that burlesque of bird, beast, and 
man, and taught him how to move and how to 
speak and sing. Iglesias and I did not disdain 
batrachian studies, and set no limit to our merri- 
ment at their quaint, solemn, half-human pranks. 
One question still is unresolved, — Why do frogs 
sta^^ and be tickled ? They snap snappishly at the 
titillating straw ; they snatch at it with their weird 
little hands ; they parry it skilfully. They hardly 
can enjoy being tickled, and yet they endure, pay- 
ing a dear price for the society of their betters. 
Frogs the frisky, frogs the spotted, were our 
comedy that day. Whenever the rain ceased, we 
rushed forth and tickled them, and thus vicariously 
tickled ourselves into more than patience, into 
jollit3^ So the day passed quickly. 



20 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 



CHAPTER III 



THE PINE-TREE. 



While we were not tickling frogs, we were talk- 
ing lumber with the Umbagog damster. I had 
already coasted Maine, piloted by Iglesias, and 
knew the fisherman-life ; now, under the same ex- 
perienced guidance, I was to study inland scenes, 
and take lumbermen for my heroes. 

Maine has two classes of warriors among its sons, 
— fighters of forest and fighters of sea. Braves 
must join one or the other army. The two are 
close allies. Only by the aid of the woodmen can 
the watermen build their engines of victory. The 
seamen in return purvey the needful luxuries for 
lumber-camps. Foresters float down timber that 
seamen may build ships and go to the saccharine 
islands of the South for molasses : for without 
molasses no lumberman could be happy in the un- 
sweetened wilderness. Pork lubricates his joints ; 
molasses gives tenacity to his muscles. 

Lumbering develops such men as Pindar saw 
when he pictured Jason, his forest hero. Life is a 
hearty and vigorous movement to them, not a 
drooping slouch. Summer is their seasoij of prep- 
aration ; winter, of the campaign ; spring, of vie-' 
tory. All over the north of the State, whatever is 
not lake or river is forest. Li summer, the Viewer, 
like a military engineer, marks out the region, and 



THE PINE-TEEE. 21 

the spots of future attack. He views the woods ; 
and wherever a monarch tree crowns the leafy level, 
he finds his way, and blazes a path. Not all trees 
are worthy of the axe. Miles of lesser timber re- 
main untouched. A Maine forest after a lumber- 
campaign is like France after a coup d'etat: the 
boiu^geoisie are prosperous as ever, but the great 
men are all gone. 

While the viewer views, his followers are on 
commissariat and quartermaster's service. They 
are bringing up their provisions and fortifying their 
camp. They build their log-station, pile up barrels 
of pork, beans, and molasses, like mortars and 
Paixhans in an arsenal, and are ready for a winter 
of stout toil and solid jollity. 

Stout is the toil, and the life seemingly dreary, 
to those who cower by ingle-nooks or stand over 
registers. But there is stirring excitement in this 
bloodless war, and around plenteous camp-fires 
vigor of merriment and hearty comradry. Men 
who wield axes and breathe hard have lungs. 
Blood aerated by the air that sings through the 
pine-woods tingles in every fibre. Tingling blood 
makes life joyous. Joy can hardly look without a 
smile or speak without a laugh. And merry is the 
evergreen-wood in electric winter. 

Snows fall level in the sheltered, still forest. 
Road-making is practicable. The region is already 
channelled with watery ways. An imperial pine, 
with its myriads of feet of future lumber, is worth 
another path cut through the bush to the frozen 



22 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

river-side. Down goes his Majesty Piuus I,, three 
half-centuries old, having reigned fifty years high 
above all his race. A little fellow with a little 
weapon has dethroned the quiet old king. Pinus 1. 
was very strong at bottom, but the little revolu- 
tionist was stronger at top. Brains without much 
trouble had their will of stolid matter. The tree 
fallen, its branches are lopped, its purple trunk is 
shortened into lengths. The teamster arrives with 
oxen in full steam, and rimy with frozen breath 
about their indignant nostrils. As he comes and 
goes, he talks to his team for company ; his con- 
versation is monotonous as the talk of lovers, but 
it has a cheerful ring through the solitude. The 
logs are chained and dragged creaking along over 
the snow to the river-side. There the subdivisions 
of Pinus the Great become a basis for a mighty 
snow-mound. But the mild March winds blow 
from seaward. Spring bourgeons. One day the 
ice has gone. The river flows visible ; and now 
that its days of higher beauty and grace have come, 
it climbs high up its banks to show that it is ready 
for new usefulness. It would be dreary for the 
great logs to see new verdure springing all around 
them, while they lay idly rotting or sprouting with 
uncouth funguses, not unsuspect of poison. But 
they will not be wasted. Lumbermen, foes to idle- 
ness and inutility, swarm again about their winter's 
trophies. They imprint certain cabalistic tokens of 
ownership on the logs, — crosses, xs, stars, cres- 
cents, alphabetical letters, — marks respected all 



TPIE PmE-TREE. 23 

along the rivers and lakes down to the boom where 
the sticks are garnered for market. The marked 
logs are tumbled into the brimming stream, and so 
ends their forest-life. 

Now comes "the great spring drive. '^ Maine 
waters in spring flow under an illimitable raft. 
Every camp contributes its myriads of brown cylin- 
ders to the millions that go bobbing down rivers 
with jaw-breaking names. And when the river 
broadens to a lake, where these impetuous voyagers 
might be stranded or miss their way and linger, 
they are herded into vast rafts, and towed down 
by boats, or by steam-tugs, if the lake is large as 
Moosehead. At the lake-foot the rafts "break up 
and the logs travel again dispersedly down stream, 
or through the '' thoro'fare '' connecting the mem- 
bers of a chain of lakes. The hero of this epoch 
is the Head-Driver. The head-driver of a timber- 
drive leads a disorderly army, that will not obey 
the word of command. Every log acts as an indi- 
vidual, according to certain imperious laws of mat- 
ter, and every log is therefore at loggerheads with 
every other log. The marshal must be in the thick 
of the fight, keeping his forces well in hand, hurry- 
ing stragglers, thrusting off the stranded, leading 
his phalanxes wisely round curves and angles, lest 
they be jammed and fill the river with a solid mass. 
As the great sticks come dashing along, turning 
porpoise-like somersets or leaping up twice their 
length in the air, he must be everywhere, livelier 
than a monkey in a mimosa, a wonder of acrobatic 



24 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

agility in biggest boots. Me made the proverb, 
'' As easy as falling off a log.'' 

Hardly less important is the Damster. To him 
it falls to conserve the waters at a proper level. 
At his dam, generally below a lake, the logs col- 
lect and lie* crowded. The river, with its obsta- 
cles of rock and rapid, would anticipate wreck for 
these timbers of future ships. Therefore, when 
the spring drive is ready, and the head-driver is 
armed with his jack-boots and his iron-pointed 
sceptre, the damster opens his sluices and lets an- 
other river flow through atop of the rock-shattered 
river below. The logs of each proprietor, detect- 
ed by their marks, pay toll as they pass the gates 
and rush bumptiously down the flood. 

Far down, at some water-power nearest the reach 
of tide, a boom checks the march of this formidable 
body. The owners step forward and claim their 
sticks. Dowse takes all marked with three crosses 
and a dash. Sowse selects whatever bears two 
crescents and a star. Rowse pokes about for his 
stock, inscribed clip, dash, star, dash, clip. No- 
body has counterfeited these hieroglyphs. The 
tale is complete. The logs go to the saw-mill. 
Sawdust floats seaward. The lumbermen junket. 
So ends the log-book. 

*' Maine," said our host, the Damster of Um- 
bagog, " was made for lumbering-work. We never 
could have got the trees out, without these lakes 
and dams." 



UMBAGOG. 25 



CHAPTER lY. 

UMBAGOG. 

Rain ends, as even Noah and the Arkites dis- 
covered. The new sensation of tickling frogs 
could entertain us for one day ; bounteous Nature 
provided other novelties for the next. We were 
at the Umbagog chain of lakes, and while it rained 
the damster had purveyed us a boat and crew. At 
sunrise he despatched us on our voyage. We 
launched upon the Androscoggin, in a bateau of 
the old Canadian type. Such light, clincher-built, 
high-nosed, flat-bottomed boats are in use wherever 
the fur-traders are or have been. Just such boats 
navigate the Saskatchawan of the North, or Fra- 
zer's River of the Northwest ; and in a larger 
counterpart of our Androscoggin bark I had three 
years before floated down the magnificent Columbia 
to Vancouver, bedded on bales of beaver-skins. 

As soon as sunrise wrote itself in shadows over 
the sparkling water, as soon as through the river- 
side belt of gnarled arbor-vitae sunbeams flickered, 
we pushed off, rowed up-stream by a pair of stout 
lumbermen. The river was a beautiful way, admit- 
ting us into the penetralia of virgin forests. It 
was not a rude wilderness : all that Northern 
woods have of foliage, verdurous, slender, delicate, 
tremulous, overhung our shadowy path, dense as 
the vines that drape a tropic stream. Every giant 

2 



26 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

tree, every one of the Pinus oligarchy, had been 
lumbered away : refined sylvan beauty remained. 
The dam checked the river's turbulence, making it 
slow and mirror-like. It merited a more melodious 
name than harsh Androscoggin. 

Five miles of such enchanting voyage brought 
lis to Lake Umbagog. Whiffs of mist had met us 
in the outlet. Presently we opened chaos, and 
chaos shut in upon us. There was no Umbagog to 
be seen, — nothing but a few yards of gray water 
and a world of gray vapor. Therefore I cannot 
criticise, nor insult, nor compliment Umbagog. 
Let us deem it beautiful. The sun tried at the fog, 
to lift it with leverage of his early level beams. 
Failing in this attempt to stir and heave away the 
mass, he climbed, and began to use his beams as 
wedges, driving them down more perpendicularly. 
Whenever this industrious craftsman made a suc- 
cessful split, the fog gaped, and we could see for a 
moment, indefinitely, an expanse of water, hedged 
with gloomy forest, and owning for its dominant 
height a wild mountain, Aziscohos, or, briefer, Es- 
quihos. 

But the fog was still too dense to be riven by 
slanting sunbeams. It closed again in solider pha- 
lanx. Our gray cell shut close about us. Esquihos 
and the distance became nowhere. In fact, our- 
selves would have been nowhere, except that a 
sluggish damp wind puffed sometimes, and, steering 
into this, we could guide our way within a few 
points of our course. 



UMBAGOG. 27 

Any traveller knows that it is no very crushing 
disappointment not to see what he came to see. 
Outside sights give something, but inside joys are 
independent. We enjoyed our dim damp voyage 
heartily, on that wide loneliness. Nor were our 
shouts and laughter the only sounds. Loons would 
sometimes wail to us, as they dived, black dots in 
the mist. Then we would wait for their bulbous 
reappearance, and let fly the futile shot with its 
muffled report, — missing, of course. 

No being has ever shot a loon, though several 
have legends of some one who has. Sound has no 
power to express a profounder emotion of utter 
loneliness than the loon's cry. Standing in piny 
darkness on the lake's bank, or floating in dimness 
of mist or glimmer of twilight on its surface, you 
hear this wailing note, and all possibility of human 
tenancy by the shore or human voyaging is annihi- 
lated. You can fancy no response to this signal 
of solitude disturbed, and again it comes sadly 
over the water, the despairing plaint of some com- 
panionless and incomplete existence, exiled from 
happiness it has never known, and conscious only 
of blank and utter want. Loon-skins have a com- 
mercial value ; so it is reported. The Barabinzians 
of Siberia, a nation " up beyond the River Ob,'^ 
tan them into wsiter-iproof paletots or aquascutums. 
How they catch their loon, before they skin their 
loon, is one of the mysteries of that unknown 
realm. 

Og, Gog, Magog, Memphremagog, all agog, 



23 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIE. 

Umbagog, — certainly the American Indians were 
the Lost Tribes, and conserved the old familiar 
syllables in their new home. 

Rowing into the damp breeze, we by and by 
traversed the lake. We had gained nothing but 
a fact of distance. But here was to be an inter- 
lude of interest. The " thoro'fare '^ linking Um- 
bagog to its next neighbor' is no thoro'fare for a 
bateau, since a bateau cannot climb through break- 
ers over boulders. We must make a ''carry,'' an 
actual portage, such as in all chronicles of pioneer 
voyages strike like the excitement of rapids into 
the monotonous course of easy descent. Another 
boat was ready on the next lake, but our chattels 
must go three miles through the woods. Yes, we 
now were to achieve a portage. Consider it, blaae 
friend, — was not this sensation alone worth the 
trip ? 

The worthy lumbermen, and our supernumerary, 
the damster's son, staggered along slowly with 
our traps. Iglesias and I, having nothing to carry, 
enjoyed the carry. We lounged along through the 
glades, now sunny for the moment, and dallied 
with raspberries and blueberries, finer than any 
ever seen. The latter henceforth began to im- 
purple our blood. Maine is lusciously carpeted 
with them. 

As we oozed along the overgrown trail, dripping 
still with last night's rain, drops would alight 
upon our necks and trickle down our backs. A 
wet spine excites hunger, — if a pedestrian on a 



UMBAGOG. 29 

portag"e, after voyaging from sunrise, needs any 
appetizer when his shadow marks noon. We 
halted, jSred up, and lunched vigorously on toasted 
pork and trimmings. As pork must be the Omega 
in forest-fare, it is well to make it the Alpha. Fate 
thus becomes choice! Citizens uneducated to for- 
est-life with much pains transport into the woods 
sealed cans of what they deem will dainties be, and 
scoff at woodsmen frizzling slices of pork on a 
pointed stick. But Experience does not disdain a 
Cockney. She broods over him, and will by and by 
hatch him into a full-fledged forester. After such 
incubation, he will recognize his natural food, and 
compactest fuel for the lamp of life. He will take 
to his pork like mother's milk. 

Our dessert of raspberries grew all along the 
path, and lured us on to a log-station by the water, 
where we found another bateau ready to transport 
us over Lakes Weelocksebacook, Allegundabagog, 
and Molly chunkamug. Doubters may smile and 
smile at these names, but they are geography. 

We do not commit ourselves to further judgment 
upon the first, than that it is doubtless worthy of its 
name. My own opinion is, that the scenery felt 
that it was dullish, and was ashamed to " exhibit '' 
to Iglesias ; if he pronounced a condemnation, Um- 
bagog and its sisters feared that they would be de- 
graded to fish-ponds merely. Therefore they veiled 
themselves. Mists hung low over the leaden wa- 
ters, and blacker clouds crushed the pine-dark hills. 

A fair curve of sandy beach separates Weelock- 



30 LIFE m THE OPEN AIR. 

sebacook from its neighbor. There is buried one 
Melattach, an Indian chief. Of course there has 
been found in Maine some one irreverent enough to 
trot a lame Pegasus over this grave, and accuse the 
frowzy old red-skin of Christian virtues and delicate 
romance. 

There were no portages this afternoon. We took 
the three lakes at easy speed, persuading ourselves 
that scenes fog would not let us see were unscenic. 
It is well that a man should think what he cannot 
get unworthy of his getting. As evening came, 
the sun made another effort, with the aid of west 
winds, at the mist. The sun cleft, the breeze 
drove. Suddenly the battle was done, victory 
easily gained. We were cheered by a gush of 
level sunlight. Even the dull, gray vapor became 
a transfigured and beautiful essence. Dull and 
uniform it had hung over the land ; now the plastic 
winds quarried it, and shaped the whole mass into 
individuals, each with its character. To the cloud- 
forms modelled out of formlessness the winds gave 
life of motion, sunshine gave life of light, and they 
hastened through the lower atmosphere, or sailed 
lingering across the blue breadths of mid-heaven, 
or dwelt peacefully aloft in the region of the cirri ; 
and whether trailing gauzy robes in flight, or 
moving stately, or dwelling on high where scope 
of vision makes travel needless, they were still the 
brightest, the gracefullest, the purest beings that 
Earth creates for man's most delicate pleasure. 

When it cleared, — when it purveyed us a broad- 



UMBAGOG. 31 

ening zone of blue sky and a heavenful of brilliant 
cloud-creatures, we were sailing over Lake Molly- 
chunkamug. Fair Mollychunkamug had not smiled 
for us until now ; — now a sunny grin spread over 
her smooth cheeks. She was all smiling, and pres- 
ently, as the breeze dimpled her, all a '' snicker '^ 
up into the roots of her hair, up among her forest- 
tresses. Mollychunkamug ! Who could be aught 
but gay, gay even to the farcical, when on such a 
name ? Is it Indian ? Bewildered Indian we deem 
it, — transmogrified somewhat from aboriginal sound 
by the fond imagination of some lumberman, find- 
ing in it a sweet memorial of his Mary far away in 
the kitchens of the Kennebec, his Mary so rotund 
of blooming cheek, his Molly of the chunky mug. 
To him who truly loves, all Nature is filled with 
Amaryllidian echoes. Every sight and every sound 
recalls her who need not be recalled, to a heart that 
has never dislodged her. 

We lingered over our interview with Molly- 
chunkamug. She may not be numbered among 
the great beauties of the world ; nevertheless, she 
is an attractive squaw, — a very honest bit of flat- 
faced prettiness in the wilderness. 

Above Mollychunkamug is Moosetocmaguntic 
Lake. Another innavigable thoro'fare unites them. 
A dam of Titanic crib-work, fifteen hundred feet 
long, confines the upper waters. Near this we 
disembarked. We balanced ourselves along the 
timbers of the dam, and reached a huge log-cabin 
at its farther end. 



32 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

Mr. Killgrove, the damster, came forth and 
ofiered us the freedom of his settlement in a to- 
bacco-box. Tobacco is hospitality in the com- 
pactest form. Civilization has determined that to- 
bacco, especially in the shape of smoke, is essential 
as food, water, or air. The pipe is everywhere 
the pipe of peace. Peace, then, and anodyne-re- 
pose, after a day of travel, were offered us by the 
friendly damster. 

A squad of lumbermen were our new fellow-citi- 
zens. These soldiers of the outermost outpost 
were in the regulation-uniform, — red-flannel shirts 
impurpled by wetting, big boots, and old felt-hats. 
Blood-red is the true soldierly color. All the resi- 
dents of Damville dwelt in a great log-barrack, 
the Hotel-de-Yille. Its architecture was of the 
early American style, and possessed the high art 
of simplicity. It was solid, not gingerbreadesque. 
Primeval American art has a rude dignity, far bet- 
ter than the sham splendors of our mediaeval and 
transition period. 

Our new friends, luxurious fellows, had been 
favored by Fate with a French-Canadian cook, him- 
self a Three of Freres Provinciaux. Such was his 
reputation. We saw by the eye of him, and by 
his nose, formed for comprehending fragrances, 
and by the lines of refined taste converging from 
his whole face toward his mouth, that he was one 
to detect and sniff" gastronomic possibilities in the 
humblest materials. Joseph Bourgogne looked 
the cook. His phiz gave us faith in him : eyes 



UMBAGOG. 33 

small and discriminating ; nose upturned, nostrils 
expanded and receptive ; mouth saucy in the literal 
sense. His voice, moreover, was a cook's, — 
thick in articulation, dulcet in tone. He spoke as 
if he deemed that a throat was created for better 
uses than laboriously manufacturing words, — as 
if the object of a mouth were to receive tribute, 
not to give commands, — as if that pink stalactite, 
his palate, were more used by delicacies entering, 
than by rough words or sorry sighs going out of 
the inner caverns. 

When we find the right man in the right place, 
our minds are at ease. The future becomes satis- 
factory as the past. Anticipation is glad certainty, 
not anxious doubt. Trusting our gastronomic 
welfare fully to this great artist, we tried for fish 
below the dam. Only petty fishlings, weighing 
ounces, took the bit between their teeth. We 
therefore doffed the fisherman and donned the artist 
and poet, and chased our own fancies down the 
dark whirlpooling river, along its dell of ever- 
greens, now lurid with the last glows of twilight. 
Iglesias and I continued dreamily gazing down the 
thoro'fare toward Molly chunkamug only a cer- 
tain length of time. Man keeps up to his highest 
elations hardly longer than a danseuse can poise in 
a pose. To be conscious of the highest beauty 
demands an involuntary intentness of observation 
so fanatically eager that presently we are pros- 
trated and need stimulants. And just as we sen- 
sitively felt this exhaustion and this need, we heard 

2* C 



34 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

a suggestive voice calling us from the front-door 
of the mansion-house of Damville, and " Supper'' 
was the cry. 

A call to the table may quell and may awaken 
romance. When, in some abode of poetized 
luxury, the " silver knell '^ sounds musically six, 
and a door opens toward a glitter that is not pew- 
ter and Wedgewood, and, with a being fair and 
changeful as a sunset cloud upon my arm, I move 
under the archway of blue curtains toward the 
asphodel and the nectar, then, Reader I Friend ! 
romance crowds into my heart, as color and fra- 
grance crowd into a rose-bud. Joseph Bourgogne, 
cook at Damville on Moosetocmaguntic, could not 
offer us such substitute for aesthetic emotions. But 
his voice of an artist created a winning picture 
half veiled with mists, evanescent and affectionate, 
such as linger fondly over Pork-and-Beans. 

Fancied joy soon to become fact. We entered 
the barrack. Beneath its smoky roof-tree was a 
pervading aroma ; near the centre of that aroma, 
a table dim with wefts of incense ; at the inner- 
most centre of that aroma and that incense, 
and whence those visible and viewless fountains 
streamed, was their source, — a Dish of Pork-and- 
Beans. 

Topmostly this. There were lesser viands, but- 
tresses to this towering triumph. Minor smokes 
from minor censers. A circle of little craterlings 
about the great crater, — of little fiery cones about 
that great volcanic dome in the midst, unopened. 



UMBAGOG. 35 

but bursting with bounty. We sat down, and 
one of the red-shirted boldly crushed the smoking 
dome. The brave fellow plunged in with a spoon 
and heaped our plates, 

A priori we had deduced Joseph Bourgogne's 
results from inspection of Joseph. Now we could 
reason back from one experimentum crucis cooked 
by him. Effect and cause were worthy of each 
other. 

The average world must be revenged upon Ge- 
nius. Greatness must be punished by itself or 
another. Joseph Bourgogne was no exception to 
the laws of the misery of Genius. He had a dis- 
tressing trait, whose exhibition tickled the dura 
ilia of the reapers of the forest. Joseph, poet- 
cook, was sensitive to new ideas. This sensitive- 
ness to the peremptory thought made him the 
slave of the wags of Damville. Whenever he had 
anything in his hands, at a stern, quick command 
he would drop it nervously. Did he approach the 
table with a second dish of pork-and-beans, a yellow 
dish of beans, browned delicately as a Sevres vase, 
then would some full-fed rogue, waiting until Jo- 
seph was bending over some devoted head, say 
sharply, " Drop that, Joseph I '^ — whereupon down 
went dish and contents, emporridging the poll and 
person of the luckless wight beneath. Always, 
were his burden pitcher of water, armful of wood, 
axe dangerous to toes, mirror, or pudding, still 
followed the same result. And when the poet-cook 
had done the mischief, he would stand shuddering 



86 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

at his work of ruin, and sigh, and curse his too 
sensitive nature. 

In honor of us, the damster kept order. Joseph 
disturbed the banquet only by entering with new 
triumphs of Art. Last came a climax-pie, — con- 
tents unknown. And when that dish, fit to set 
before a king, was opened, the poem of our sup- 
per was complete. J. B. sailed to the Parnassus 
where Ude and Yattel feast, forever cooking im- 
mortal banquets in star-lighted spheres. 

Then we sat in the picturesque dimness of the 
lofty cabin, under the void where the roof shut off 
the stars, and talked of the pine-woods, of logging, 
measuring, and spring-drives, and of moose-hunt- 
ing on snow-shoes, until our mouths had a wild 
flavor more spicy than if we had chewed spruce- 
gum by the hour. Spruce-gum is the aboriginal 
quid of these regions. Foresters chew this tena- 
cious morsel as tars nibble at a bit of oakum, 
grooms at a straw, Southerns at tobacco, or 
school-girls at a slate-pencil. 

The barrack was fitted up with bunks. Iglesias 
rolled into one of these. I mummied myself in my 
blankets and did penance upon a bench. Pine- 
knots in my pallet sought out my tenderest spots. 
The softer wood was worn away about these pro- 
jections. Hillocky was the surface, so that I beat 
about uneasily and awoke often, ready to envy 
Iglesias. But from him, also, I heard sounds of 
struggling. 



UP THE LAKES. 37 

CHAPTER V. 

UP THE LAKES. 

Mr. Killgrove, slayer of forests, became the 
pilot of our voyage up Lake Moosetocmaguntic. 
We shoved off in a bateau, while Joseph Bour- 
gogne, sad at losing us, stood among the stumps, 
waving adieux with a dish-clout. We had solaced 
his soul with meed of praise. And now, alas ! we 
left him to the rude jokes and half-sympathies of 
the lumbermen. The artist-cook saw his apprecia- 
tors vanish away, and his proud dish-clout drooped 
like a defeated banner. 

*' A fine lake," remarked Iglesias, instituting the 
matutinal conversation in a safe and general way. 

"Yes,'' returned Mr. Killgrove, "when you 
come to get seven or eight feet more of water atop 
of this in spring, it is considerable of a puddle.'' 

Our weather seemed to be now bettering with 
more resolution. Many days had passed since Au- 
rora had shown herself, — many days since the 
rising sun and the world had seen each other. But 
yesterday this sulky estrangement ended, and, after 
the beautiful reconciliation at sunset, the faint mists 
of doubt in their brief parting for a night had now 
no power against the ardors of anticipated meeting. 
As we shot out upon the steaming water, the sun 
was just looking over the lower ridges of a moun- 
tain opposite. Air, blue and quivering, hung under 



38 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

shelter of the mountain-front, as if a film from the 
dim purple of night were hiding there to see what 
beauty day had, better than its own. The gray fog, 
so dreary for three mornings, was utterly van- 
quished ; all was vanished, save where " swimming 
vapors sloped athwart the glen,'' and "crept from 
pine to pine." These had dallied, like spies of a 
flying army, to watch for chances of its return ; 
but they, too, carried away by the enthusiasms of 
a world liberated and illumined, changed their alle- 
giance, joined the party of hope and progress, and 
added the grace of their presence to the fair pa- 
geant of a better day. 

Lake Moosetocmaguntic is good, — above the 
average. If its name had but two syllables, and 
the thing named were near Somewhere, poetry and 
rhetoric would celebrate it, and the world would 
be prouder of itself for another " gem." Now no- 
body sees it, and those who do have had their an- 
ticipations lengthened leagues by every syllable 
of its sesquipedalian title. One expects, perhaps, 
something more than what he finds. He finds a 
good average sheet of water, set in a circlet of 
dark forest, — forests sloping up to wooded hills, 
and these to wooded mountains. Very good and 
satisfactory elements, and worth notice, — especial- 
ly when the artistic eye is also a fisherman's eye, 
and he detects fishy spots. As to wilderness, there 
can be none more complete. At the upper end of 
the lake is a trace of humanity in a deserted cabin 
on a small clearing. There a hermit pair once 



UP THE LAKES. 39 

lived, — man and wife, utterly alone for fifteen 
years, — once or twice a year, perhaps, visited by 
lurabernien. Fifteen years alone with a wife ! a 
trial, certainly, — not necessarily in the desponding 
sense of the word ; not as Yankees have it, making 
trial a misfortune, but a test. 

Mr. Killgrove entertained us with resinous-fla- 
vored talk. The voyage was unexcitingly pleas- 
ant. We passed an archipelago of scrubby islands, 
and, turning away from a blue vista of hills north- 
ward, entered a lovely curve of river richly over- 
hung with arbor-vitse, a shadowy quiet reach of 
clear water, crowded below its beautiful surface 
with reflected forest and reflected sky. 

'' Iglesias,^' said I, '' we divined how Molly- 
chunkamug had its nam6 ; now, as to Moosetocma- 
guntic, — whence that elongated appellative ? ^^ 

'' It was named,'' replied Iglesias, "from the ad- 
venture of a certain hunter in these regions. He 
was moose-hunting here in days gone by. His tale 
runs thus : — 'I had been four days without game, 
and naturally without anything to eat except pine- 
cones and green chestnuts. There was no game in 
the forest. The trout would not bite, for I had no 
tackle and no hook. I was starving. I sat me 
down, and rested my trusty but futile rifle against 
a fallen tree. Suddenly I heard a tread, turned my 
head, saw a Moose, — took — my — gun, — tick! 
he was dead. I was saved. I feasted, and in grat- 
itude named the lake Moosetookmyguntick.' Ge- 
ography has modified it, but the name cannot be 
misunderstood." 



40 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

We glided up the fair river, and presently came 
to the hut of Mr. Smith, fisherman and misogynist. 
And there is little more to be said about Mr. Smith. 
He appears in this chronicle because he owned a 
boat which became our vehicle on Lake Oquossok, 
Aquessok, Lakewocket, or Eangeley. Mr. Smith 
guided us across the carry to the next of the chain 
of lakes, and embarked us in a crazy skiff. It was 
blowing fresh, and, not to be wrecked, we coasted 
close to the gnarled arbor- vitas thickets. Smith 
sogered along, drawling dull legends of trout- 
fishing. 

" Drefful notional critturs traout be,'' he said, — 
*' olluz bitin" at whodger haant got. Orful con- 
trairy critturs, — jess like fimmls. Yer can cotch 
a fimml with a feather, ef she 's ter be cotched ; ef 
she haant ter be cotched, yer may scoop ther hul 
world dry an' yer haant got her. Jess so traout." 

The misogynist bored us with his dull philoso- 
phy. The buffetings of inland waves were not 
only insulting, but dangerous, to our leaky punt. 
At any moment, Iglesias and I might find our- 
selves floundering together in thin fresh water. 
Joyfully, therefore, at last, did we discern clear- 
ings, culture, and habitations at the lake-head. 
There was no tavernous village of Rangeley ; that 
would have been too great a contrast, after the for- 
est and the lakes, where loons are the only disturb- 
ers of silence, — incongruity enough to overpower 
utterly the ringing of woodland music in our 
hearts. Rangeley was a townless township, as 



UP THE LAKES. 41 

the outermost township should be. We had, 
however, learnt from Killgrove, feller of forests, 
that there was a certain farmer on the lake, one 
of the chieftains of that realm, who would hos- 
pitably entertain us. Smith, wheedler of trout, 
landed us in quite an ambitious foamy surf at the 
foot of a declivity below our future host's farm. 

AYe had now traversed Lakes Umbagog", Wee- 
locksebacook, AUegundabagog, Mollychunkamug, 
Moosetocmaguntic, and Oquossok. 

We had been compelled to pronounce these 
names constantly. Of course our vocal organs 
were distorted. Of course our vocal nervous sys- 
tems were shattered, and we had a chronic lame- 
ness of the jaws. We therefore recognized a 
peculiar appropriateness in the name of our host. 

Toothaker was his name. He dwelt upon the 
lawn-like bank, a hundred feet above the lake. 
Mr. Toothaker himself was absent, but his wife 
received us hospitably, disposed us in her guest- 
chamber, and gratified us with a supper. 

This was Rangeley Township, the outer settle- 
ment on the west side of Maine. A "squire/^ 
from England gave it his name. He bought the 
tract, named it, inhabited several years, a popular 
squire-arch, and then returned from the wild to 
the tame, from pine woods and stumpy fields to 
the elm-planted hedge-rows and shaven lawns of 
placid England. The local gossip did not reveal 
any cause for Mr. Rangeley's fondness for con- 
trasts and exile. 



42 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIK. 

Mr. Toothaker has been a careful dentist to the 
stumps of his farm. It is beautifully stumpless, 
and slopes verdantly, or varied with yellow har- 
vest, down to the lake and up to the forest prime- 
val. He has preserved a pretty grove of birch 
and maple as shelter, ornament, partridge-cover, 
and perpendicular wood-pile. Below his house 
and barns is the lovely oval of the lake, seen 
across the fair fields, bright with wheat, or green 
with pasture. A road, hedged with briskly-aspir- 
ing young spruces, runs for a mile northward, 
making a faint show at attacking the wilderness. 
A mile's loneliness is enough for this unsupported 
pioneer ; he runs up a tree, sees nothing but dark 
woods, thinks of Labrador and the North' Pole, 
and stops. 

Next morning, Mr. Toothaker returned from a 
political meeting below among the towns. It was 
the Presidential campaign, — stirring days from 
pines to prairies, stirring days from codfish to 
cocoa-nuts. Tonguey men were talking from every 
stump all over the land. Blatant patriots were 
heard, wherever a flock of compatriots could be 
persuaded to listen. The man with one speech 
containing two stories was makingr the tour of all 
the villages. The man with two speeches, each 
with three stories, one of them very broad indeed, 
was in request for the towns. The oratorical 
Stentorian man, with inexhaustible rivers of speech 
and rafts of stories, was in full torrent at mass- 
meetings. There was no neighborhood that might 



UP THE LAKES. 43 

not see and hear an M. C. But Rangeley had 
been the minus town, and by all the speech-makers 
really neglected ; there was danger that its'voters 
must deposit their ballots according to their own 
judgment, without any advice from strangers. 
This, of course, would never do. Mr. Toothaker 
found that we fraternized in politics. He called 
upon us, as patriots, to become the orators of 
the day. Why not ? Except that these seldom 
houses do not promise an exhilarating crowd. We 
promised, however, that, if he would supply hear- 
ers, we between us would find a speaker. 

Mr. Toothaker called a nephew, and charged 
him to boot and saddle, and flame it through the 
country-side that two ''Men from New York'' 
were there, and would give a " Lecture on Poli- 
tics," at the Red School-house, at five that even- 
ing. 

And to the Red School-house, at five, crowded 
the men, a}^, and the women and children, of 
Rangeley and thereabout. They came as the winds 
and waves come when forests and navies are rended 
and stranded. Horse, foot, and charioteers, they 
thronged toward the rubicund fountain of educa- 
tion. From houses that lurked invisible in clear- 
ings suddenly burst forth a population, an audience 
ardent with patriotism, eager for politics even from 
a Cockney interpreter, and numerous enough to 
stir electricity in a speaker's mind. Some of the 
matrons brought bundles of swaddled infants, to be 
early instructed in good citizenship ; but too often 



44 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIK. 

these young patriots were found' to have but crude 
notions on the subject of applause, and they were 
ignominiously removed, fighting violently for their 
privilege of free speech, doubling their unterrified 
fists, and getting as red in the face as the school- 
house. 

Mr. Toothaker, in a neat speech, introduced the 
orator, who took his stand in the schoolmaster's 
pulpit, and surveyed his stalwart and gentle hear- 
ers, filling the sloping benches and overflowing out- 
of-doors. Gaffer and gammer, man and maiden, 
were distributed, the ladies to the right of the 
aisle, the gentlemen to the left. They must not 
be in contact, — perhaps because gaffer will gossip 
with gammer, and youth and maid will toy. Dig- 
nity demanded that they should be distinct as the 
conservative Right and radical Left of a French 
Assembly. Convenient, this, for the orator ; since 
thus his things of beauty, joys forever, he could 
waft, in dulcet tones, over to the ladies' side, and 
his things of logic, tough morsels for life-long 
digestion, he could jerk, like bolts from an arbalist, 
over at the open mouths of gray gaffer and robust 
man. 

I am not about to report the orator's speech. 
Stealing another's thunder is an oflence punish- 
able condignly ever since the days of Salmoneus. 
Perhaps, too, he may wish to use the same eloquent 
bits in the present Olj^mpiad ; for American life is 
measured by Olympiads, signalized by nobler con- 
tests than the petty states of Greece ever knew. 



UP THE LAKES. 45 

The people of Rangeley disappeared as mysteri- 
ously as they had emerged from the woods, hav- 
ing had their share of the good or bad talk of 
that year of freedom. If political harangues edu- 
cate, the educated class was largely recruited 
that summer. 

Next day, again, was stormy. We stayed qui- 
etly under shelter, preparing for our real journey 
after so much prelude. The Isaac Newton's 
steam-whistle had sent up the curtain ; the over- 
ture had followed with strains Der-Freischutzy in 
the Adirondacks, pastoral in the valleys of Ver- 
mont and New Hampshire, funebral and andante 
in the fogs of Mollychunkamug ; now it was to 
end in an allegretto gallopade, and the drama 
would open. 

At last the sun shone bright upon the silky rip- 
ples of the lake. Mr. Toothaker provided two 
buggies, — one for himself and our traps, one for 
Iglesias and me. We rattled away across county 
and county. And so at full speed we drove all 
day, and, with a few hours' halt, all night, — all a 
fresh, starry night, — ■ until gay sunrise brought us 
to Skowhegan, on the road to Moosehead Lake. 

As we had travelled all night, breakfast must be 
our substitute for slumber. Repletion, instead of 
repose, must restore us. Two files of red-shirted 
lumbermen, brandishing knives at each other across 
a long table, only excited us to livelier gymnastics ; 
and when we had thus hastily crammed what they 
call in Maine beefsteak, and what they infuse down 



46 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIK. 

East for coffee, we climbed to the top of a coach 
of the bounding-billow motion, and went pitching 
northward. 

Two facts we learned from our coachman : one, 
that we were passing that day through a ''pretty 
sassy country''; also, that the same region was 
^'only meant to hold the world together." Per- 
sonal "sassiness'' is a trait of which every Yan- 
kee is proud ; Iglesias and I both venture to hope 
that we appreciate the value of that quality, and 
have properly Cultivated it. Topographical " sas- 
siness," unmodified by culture and control, is a 
rude, rugged, and unattractive trait ; and New 
England is, on the whole, "sassier'' than I could 
wish. Let the dullish day's drive, then, be passed 
over dumbly. In the evening we dismounted at 
Greenville, at the foot of Moosehead Lake. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE BIRCH. 



The rivers of Maine, as a native observed to me, 
" olluz spread 'mselves inter bulges." Molly- 
chunkamug and her follows are the bulges of 
the Androscoggin ; Moosehead, of the Kennebec. 
Sluggish streams do not need such pauses. Peace 
is thrown away upon stolidity. The torrents of 



THE BIRCH. 47 

Maine are hasty young heroes, galloping so hard 
when they gallop, and charging with such rash 
enthusiasm when they charge, hurrying with such 
Achillean ardor toward their eternity of ocean, 
that they would never know the influence, in their 
heart of hearts, of blue cloudlessness, or the glory 
of noonday, or the pageantries of sunset, — they 
would only tear and rive and shatter carelessly. 
Nature, therefore, provides valleys for the streams 
to bulge in, and entertain celestial reflections. 

Nature, arranging lake-spots as educational epi- 
sodes for the Maine rivers, disposes them also with 
a view to utility. Mr. Killgrove and his fellow- 
lumbermen treat lakes as log-puddles and raft- 
depots. Moosehead is the most important of these, 
and keeps a steamboat for tugging rafts and trans- 
porting raftsmen. 

Moosehead also provides vessels far dearer to 
the heart of the adventurous than anything driven 
by steam. Here, mayhap, will an untravelled trav- 
eller make his first acquaintance with the birch- 
bark canoe, and learn to call it by the affectionate 
diminutive, " Birch. '^ Earlier in life there was 
no love lost between him and whatever bore that 
name. Even now, if the untravelled one's first 
acquaintance be not distinguished by an unlovely 
ducking, so much the worse. The ducking must 
come. Caution must be learnt by catastrophe. 
No one can ever know how unstable a thing is 
a birch canoe, unless he has felt it slide away from 
under his misplaced feet. Novices should take 



48 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

nude practice in empty birches, lest they spill 
themselves and the load of full ones, — a wondrous 
easy thing to do. 

A birch canoe is the right thing in the right 
place. Maine's rivers are violently impulsive and 
spasmodic in their running. Sometimes you have 
a foamy rapid, sometimes a broad shoal, sometimes 
a barricade of boulders with gleams of white water 
springing through or leaping over its rocks. Your 
boat for voyaging here must be stout enough to 
buffet the rapid, light enough to skim the shallow, 
agile enough to vault over, or lithe enough to slip 
through, the barricade. Besides, sometimes the 
barricade becomes a compact wall, — a baffler, un- 
less boat and boatmen can circumvent it, — unless 
the nautical carriage can itself be carried about the 
obstacle, — can be picked up, shouldered, and made 
off with. 

A birch meets all these demands. It lies, light 
as a leaf, on whirlpooling surfaces. A tip of the 
paddle can turn it into the eddy beside the breaker. 
A check of the setting-pole can hold it steadfast 
on the brink of wreck. Where there is water 
enough to varnish the pebbles, there it will glide. 
A birch thirty feet long, big enough for a trio 
and their traps, weighs only seventy-five pounds. 
When the rapid passes into a cataract, when the 
wall of rock across the stream is impregnable in 
front, it can be taken in the flank by an amphibious 
birch. The navigator lifts his canoe out of water 
and bonnets himself with it. He wears it on head 



THE BIKCH. 49 

and shoulders, around the impassable spot. Below 
the rough water, he gets into his elongated cha- 
peau and floats away. Without such vessel, agile, 
elastic, imponderable, and transmutable, Andro- 
scoggin, Kennebec, and Penobscot would be no 
thoro'fares for human beings. Musquash might 
dabble, chips might drift, logs might turn somer- 
sets along their lonely currents ; but never voy- 
ager, gentle or bold, could speed through brilliant 
perils, gladdening the wilderness with shout and 
song. 

Maine's rivers must have birch canoes ; Maine's 
woods, of course, therefore, provide birches. The 
white-birch, paper-birch, canoe-birch, grows large 
in moist spots near the stream where it is needed. 
Seen by the flicker of a camp-fire at night, they 
surround the intrusive traveller like ghosts of 
giant sentinels. Once, Indian tribes with names 
that " nobody can speak and nobody can spell'' 
roamed these forests. A stouter second growth 
of humanity has ousted them, save a few seedy 
ones who gad about the land, and centre at Old- 
town, their village near Bangor. These aborigines 
are the birch-builders. They detect by the river-side 
the tree barked with material for canoes. They 
strip it, and fashion an artistic vessel, which civili- 
zation cannot better. Launched in the fairy light- 
ness of this, and speeding over foamy waters 
between forest-solitudes, one discovers, as if he 
were the first to know it, the truest poetry of 
pioneer-life. 

3 D 



50 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

Such poetry Iglesias had sung to me, until my 
life seemed incomplete while I did not know the 
sentiment by touch : description, even from the 
most impassioned witness, addressed to the most 
imaginative hearer, is feeble. We both wanted 
to be in a birch : Iglesias, because he knew the 
fresh, inspiring vivacity of such a voyage ; I, 
because I divined it. We both needed to be some- 
where near the heart of New England's wildest 
wilderness. We needed to see Katahdin, — the 
distinctest mountain to be found on this side of the 
continent. Katahdin was known to Iglesias. He 
had scuffled up its eastern land-slides with a squad 
of lumbermen. He had birched it down to Lake 
Chesuncook in bygone summers, to see Katahdin 
distant. Now, in a birch we would slide down the 
Penobscot, along its line of lakes, camp at Katah- 
din, climb it, and speed down the river to tide- 
water. 

That was the great object of all our voyage, with 
its educating preludes, — Katahdin and a breath- 
less dash down the Penobscot. And while we 
flashed along the gleam of the river, Iglesias fan- 
cied he might see the visible, and hear the musical, 
and be stirred by the beautiful. These, truly, are 
not far from the daily life of any seer, listener, and 
perceiver ; but there, perhaps, up in the strong wil- 
derness, we might be recreated to a more sensitive 
vitality. The Antaean treatment is needful for ter- 
restrials, unless they would dwindle. The diviner 
the power in any artist-soul, the more distinctly is 



THE BIRCH. 51 ^Y. 

he commanded to get near the divine without him. 
Fancies pale, that are not fed on facts. It is very 
easy for any man to be a plagiarist from himself, 
and present his own reminiscences half disguised, 
instead of new discoveries.. Now up by Katahdin 
there were new discoveries to be made ; and that 
mountain would sternly eye us, to know whether 
Iglesias were a copyist, or I a Cockney. 

Katahdin was always in its place up in the 
woods. The Penobscot was always buzzing along 
toward the calm reaches, where it takes the shadow 
of the mountain. All we needed was the birch. 

The birch thrust itself under our noses as we 
drove into Greenville. It was mounted upon a 
coach that preceded us, and wabbled oddly along, 
like a vast hat upon a dwarf We talked with its 
owner, as he dismounted it. He proved our very 
man. He and his amphibious canoe had just made 
the trip we proposed, with a flotilla. Certain Bos- 
tonians had essayed it, — vague Northmen, preced- 
ing our Columbus voyage. 

Enter now upon the scene a new and important 
character, Cancut the canoe-man. Mr. Cancut, 
owner and steerer of a birch, who now became our 
'' guide, philosopher, and friend," is as American 
as a birch, as the Penobscot, or as Katahdin's self. 
Cancut was a jolly fatling, — almost too fat, if he 
will pardon me, for sitting in the stern of the im- 
ponderable canoe. Cancut, though for this summer 
boatman or bircher, had other strings to his bow. 
He was taking variety now, after employment more 



52 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIE. 

monotonous. Last summer, his services had been 
in request throughout inhabited Maine, to " peddle 
gravestones and collect bills." The Gravestone- 
Peddler is an institution of New England. His 
wares are wanted, or will be wanted, by every one. 
Without discriminating the bereaved households, he 
presents himself at any door, with attractive draw- 
ings of his wares, and seduces people into paying 
the late tribute to their great-grandfather, or laying 
up a monument for themselves against the inevita- 
ble day of demand. His customers select from his 
samples a tasteful " set of stones '' ; and next sum- 
mer he drives up and unloads the marble, with the 
names well spelt, and the cherub's head artistically 
chiselled by the best workmen of Boston. Cancut 
told us, as an instance of judicious economy, how, 
when he called once upon a recent widow to ask 
what he could do in his line for her deceased hus- 
band's tomb, she chose from his patterns neat head- 
and foot-stones for the dear defunct, and then bar- 
gained with him to throw in a small pair for her boy 
Johnny, — a poor, sick crittur, that would be want- 
ing his monument long before next summer. 

This lugubrious business had failed to infect Mr. 
Cancut with corresponding deportment. Undertak- 
ers are always sombre in dreary mockery of woe. 
Sextons are solemncholy, if not solemn. I fear 
Cancut was too cheerful for his trade, and therefore 
had abandoned it. 

Such was our guide, the captain, steersman, and 
ballaster of our vessel. We struck our bargain 



THE BIECH. 03 

with him at once, and at once proceeded to make 
preparations. Chiefly we prepared by stripping 
ourselves bare of everything except " must-haves. '^ 
A birch, besides three men, will carry only the sim- 
plest baggage of a trio. Passengers who are con- 
stantly to make portages will not encumber them- 
selves with what-nots. Man must have clothes for 
day and night, and must have provisions to keep 
his clothes properly filled out. These two articles 
we took in compact form, regretting even the ne- 
cessity of guarding against a ducking by a change 
of clothes. Our provision, that unrefined pork and 
hard-tack, presently to be converted into artist 
and friend, was packed with a few delicacies in a 
firkin, — a commodious case, as we found. 

A little steamer plies upon the lake, doing lum- 
ber-jobs, and not disdaining the traveller's dollars. 
Upon this, one August morning, we embarked our- 
selves and our frail birch, for our voyage to the up- 
per end of Moosehead. Iglesias, in a red shirt, be- 
came a bit of color in the scene. I, in a red shirt, 
repeated the flame. Cancut, outweighing us both 
together, in a broader red shirt, outglared us both. 
When we three met, and our scarlet reflections 
commingled, there was one spot in the world gor- 
geous as a conclave of cardinals, as a squad of 
British grenadiers, as a Vermont maple-wood in 
autumn. 



54 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 



CHAPTER YII. 

MOOSEHEAD. 

MoosEHEAD Lake is a little bigger than the Lago 
di Guarda, and therefore, according to our Ameri- 
can standard, rather more important. It is not 
very grand, not very picturesque, but considerably 
better than no lake, — a meritorious mean ; not 
pretty and shadowy, like a thousand lakelets all 
over the land, nor tame, broad, and sham-oceanic, 
like the tanks of Niagara. On the west, near its 
southern end, is a well-intended blackness and 
roughness called Squaw Mountain. The rest on 
that side is undistinguished pine woods. 

Mount Kinneo is midway up the lake, on the east. 
It is the show-piece of the region, — the best they 
can do for a precipice, and really admirably done. 
Kinneo is a solid mass of purple flint rising seven 
hundred feet upright from the water. By the side 
of this block could some Archimedes appear, armed 
with a suitable " pou sto '' and a mallet heavy 
enough, he might strike fire to the world. Since 
percussion-guns and friction cigar-lighters came in, 
flint has somewhat lost its value ; and Kinneo is 
of no practical use at present. We cannot allow 
inutilities in this world. Where is the Archime- 
des? He could make a handsome thing of it by 
flashing us off with a spark into a new system of 
things. 



MOOSEHEAD. 55 

Below this dangerous cliff on the lake-bank ia 
the Kinneo House, where fishermen and sportsmen 
may dwell, and kill or catch, as skill or fortune 
favors. The historical success of all catchers and 
killers is well balanced, since men who cannot mas- 
ter facts are always men of imagination, and it is 
as easy for them to invent as for the other class to 
do. Boston men haunt Kinneo. For a hero who 
has not skill enough or imagination enough to kill 
a moose stands rather in Nowhere with Boston 
fashion. The tameness of that pleasant little cap- 
ital makes its belles ardent for tales of wild adven- 
ture. New York women are less exacting ; a few 
of them, indeed, like a dash of the adventurous in 
their lover ; but most of them are business-women, 
fighting their way out of vulgarity into style, and 
romance is an interruption. 

Kinneo was an old station of Iglesias's, in those 
days when he was probing New England for the 
picturesque. When the steamer landed, he acted 
as cicerone, and pointed out to me the main object 
of interest thereabouts, — the dinner-table. We 
dined with lumbermen and moose-hunters, scuf- 
flingly. 

The moose is the lion of these regions. Near 
Greenville, a gigantic pair of moose-horns marks a 
fork in the road. Thenceforth moose-facts and 
moose-legends become the staple of conversation. 
Moose-meat, combining the flavor of beefsteak and 
the white of turtle, appears on the table. Moose- 
horns with full explanations, so that the buyer can 



56 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

play the part of hunter, are for sale. Tame moose- 
lings are exhibited. Sportsmen at Kinneo can 
choose a matinee with the trout or a soiree with the 
moose. 

The chief fact of a moose^s person is that pair of 
strange excrescences, his horns. Like fronds of 
tree-fern, like great corals or sea-fans, these great 
palmated plates of bone lift themselves from his 
head, grand, useless, clumsy. A pair of moose- 
horns overlooks me as I write ; they weigh twenty 
pounds, are nearly five feet in spread, on the right 
horn are nine developed and two undeveloped 
antlers, the plates are sixteen inches broad, — a 
doughty head-piece. 

Every year the great, slow-witted animal must 
renew his head-gear. He must lose the deformity, 
his pride, and cultivate another. In spring, when 
the first anemone trembles to the vernal breeze, the 
moose nods welcome to the wind, and as he nods 
feels something rattle on his skull. He nods again, 
as Homer sometimes did. Lo ! something drops. 
A horn has dropped, and he stands a bewildered 
unicorn. For a few days he steers wild ; in this 
ill-balanced course his lone horn strikes every tree 
on this side as he dodges from that side. The un- 
happy creature is staggered, body and mind. In 
what Jericho of the forest can he hide his dimin- 
ished head? He files frantic. He runs amuck 
through the woods. Days pass by in gloom, and 
then comes despair ; another horn falls, and he 
becomes defenceless ; and not till autumn does his 
brow bear again its full honors. 



MOOSEHEAD. 57 

I make no apology for giving a few lines to the 
great event of a moose's life. He is the hero of 
those evergreen-woods, — a hero too little recog- 
nized, except by stealthy assassins, meeting him 
by midnight for massacre. No one seems to have 
viewed him in his dramatic character, as a forest- 
monarch enacting every year the tragicomedy of 
decoronation and recoronation.* 

The Kinneo House is head-quarters for moose- 
hunters. This summer the waters of Maine were 
diluvial, the feeding-grounds were swamped. Of 
this we took little note : we were in chase of some- 
thing certain not to be drowned ; and the higher 
the deluge, the easier we could float to Katahdin. 
After dinner we took the steamboat again for the 
upper end of the lake. 

It was a day of days for sunny summer sail- 
ing. Purple haziness curtained the dark front of 
Kinneo, — a delicate haze purpled by this black 
promontory, but melting blue like a cloud-fall of 
cloudless sky upon loftier distant summits. The 
lake rippled pleasantly, flashing at every rip- 
ple. 

Suddenly, " Katahdin ! " said Iglesias. 

Yes, there was a dim point, the object of our 
pilgrimage. 

Katahdin, — the more I saw of it, the more 
grateful I was to the three powers who enabled me 
to see it : to Nature for building it, to Iglesias 
for guiding me to it, to myself for going. 

We sat upon the deck and let Katahdin grow, — 

3* 



58 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

and sitting, talked of mountains, somewhat to this 
effect : — 

Mountains are the best things to be seen. 
Within the keen outline of a great peak is packed 
more of distance, of detail, of light and shade, of 
color, of all the qualities of space, than vision can 
get in any other way. No one who has not seen 
mountains knows how far the eye can reach. Level 
horizons are within cannon-shot. Mountain hori- 
zons not only may be a hundred miles away, but 
they lift up a hundred miles at length, to be seen 
at a look. Mountains make a background against 
which blue sky can be seen ; between them and 
the eye are so many miles of visible atmosphere, 
domesticated, brought down to the regions of earth, 
not resting overhead, a vagueness and a void. Air, 
blue in full daylight, rose and violet at sunset, 
gray like powdered starlight by night, is collected 
and isolated by a mountain, so that the eye can 
comprehend it in nearer acquaintance. There is 
nothing so refined as the outline of a distant moun- 
tain : even a rose-leaf is stiff-edged and harsh in 
comparison. Nothing else has that definite indefi- 
niteness, that melting permanence, that evanescing 
changelessness. Clouds in vain strive to imitate 
it ; they are made of slighter stuff ; they can be 
blunt or ragged, but they cannot have that solid 
positiveness. 

Mountains, too, are very stationary, — always at 
their post. They are characters of dignity, not 
without noble changes of mood ; but these changes 



MOOSEHEAD. 59 

are not bewildering, capricious shifts. A mountain 
can be studied like a picture ; its majesty, its grace, 
can be got by heart. Purple precipice, blue pyra- 
mid, cone or dome of snow, it is a simple image 
and a positive thought. It is a delicate fact, first, 
of beauty, — then, as you approach, a strong fact 
of majesty and power. But even in its cloudy, dis- 
tant fairness there is a concise, emphatic reality 
altogether uncloudlike. 

Manly men need the wilderness and the moun- 
tain. Katahdin is the best mountain in the wildest 
wild to be had on this side the continent. He 
looked at us encouragingly over the hills. I saw 
that he was all that Iglesias, connoisseur of moun- 
tains, had promised, and was content to wait for 
the day of meeting. 

The steamboat dumped us and our canoe on a 
wharf at the lake-head about four o^clock. A 
wharf promised a settlement, which, however, did 
not exist. There was population, — one man and 
one great ox. Following the inland-pointing nose 
of the ox, we saw, penetrating the forest, a wooden 
railroad. Ox-locomotive, and no other, befitted 
such rails. The train was one great go-cart. We 
packed our traps upon it, roofed them with our 
birch, and, without much ceremony of whistling, 
moved on. As we started, so did the steamboat. 
The link between us and the inhabited world grew 
more and more attenuated. Finally it snapped, and 
we were in the actual wilderness. 



60 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

I am sorry to chronicle that Tglesias hereupon 
turned to the ox, and said impatiently, — 

'' Now, then, bullgine ! '' 

Why a railroad, even a wooden one, here ? For 
this : the Penobscot at this point approaches within 
two and a half miles of Moosehead Lake, and over 
this portage supplies are taken conveniently for 
the lumbermen of an extensive lumbering country 
above, along the river. 

Corduroy railroad, ox-locomotive, and go-cart 
train up in the pine woods were a novelty and a 
privilege. Our cloven-hoofed engine did not whirr 
turbulently along, like a thing of wheels. Slow 
and sure must the knock-kneed chewer of cuds 
step from log to log. Creakingly the wain followed 
him, pausing and starting and pausing again with 
groans of inertia. A very fat ox was this, protest- 
ing every moment against his employment, where 
speed, his duty, and sloth, his nature, kept him 
bewildered by their rival injunctions. Whenever 
the engine-driver stopped to pick a huckleberry, 
the train, self-braking, stopped also, and the engine 
took in fuel from the tall grass that grew between 
the sleepers. It was the sensation of sloth at its 
uttermost. 

Iglesias and I, meanwhile, marched along and 
shot the game of the country, namely, one Tetrao 
Canadensis, one spruce-partridge, making in all one 
bird, quite too pretty to shoot with its red and 
black, plumage. The spruce-partridge is rather 
rare in inhabited Maine, and is malignantly accused 



MOOSEHEAD. 61 

of being bitter in flesh, and of feeding on spruce- 
buds to make itself distasteful. Our bird we found 
sweetly berry-fed. The bitterness, if any, was that 
we had not a brace. 

So, at last, in an hour, after shooting one bird 
and swallowing six million berries, for the railroad 
was a shaft into a mine of them, we came to the 
terminus. The chewer of cuds was disconnected, 
and plodded off to his stable. The go-cart slid 
down an inclined plane to the river, the Penobscot. 

We paid quite freely for our brief monopoly of 
the railroad to the superintendent, engineer, stoker, 
poker, switch-tender, brakeman, baggage-master, 
and every other official in one. But who would 
grudge his tribute to the enterprise that opened 
this narrow vista through toward the Hyperbore- 
ans, and planted these once not crumbling sleepers 
and once not rickety rails, to save the passenger a 
portage ? Here, at Bullgineville, the pluralist rail- 
road-manager had his cabin and clearing, ox-engine 
house and warehouse. 

To balance these symbols of advance, we found 
a station of the rear-guard of another army. An 
Indian party of two was encamped on the bank. 
The fusty sagamore of this pair was lying wound- 
ed ; his fusty squaw tended him tenderly, minding, 
meanwhile, a very witch-like caldron of savory 
fume. No skirmish, with actual war-whoop and 
sheen of real scalping-knife, had put this prostrate 
chieftain here hors du combat. He had shot him- 
self cruelly by accident. So he informed us feebly, 



62 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

in a muddy, guttural patois of Canadian French. 
This aboriginal meeting was of great value ; it 
helped to eliminate the railroad. 



CHAPTER YIII. 

PENOBSCOT. 

It was now five o'clock of an August evening. 
Our work-day was properly done. But we were 
'to camp somewhere, "anywhere out of the world'' 
of raih'oads. The Penobscot glimmered winningly. 
Our birch looked wistful for its own element. Why 
not marry shallop to stream ? Why not yield to 
the enticement of this current, fleet and clear, and 
gain a few beautiful miles before nightfall ? All 
the world was before us where to choose our bi- 
vouac. We dismounted our birch from the truck, 
and laid its lightness upon the stream. Then we 
became stevedores, stowing cargo. Sheets of 
birch-bark served for dunnage. Cancut, in flam- 
boyant shirt, ballasted the after-part of the craft. 
For the present, I, in flamboyant shirt, paddled in 
the bow, while Iglesias, similarly glowing, sat a la 
Turque midships among the traps. Then, with a 
longing sniff at the caldron of Soggysampcook, we 
launched upon the Penobscot. 

Upon no sweeter stream was voyager ever 



PENOBSCOT. 63 

launched than this of our summer-evening sail. 
There was no worse haste in its more speed ; it 
went fleetly lingering along its leafy dell. Its cur- 
rent, unripplingly smooth, but dimpled ever, and 
wrinkled with the whirls that mark an underflow 
deep and shady, bore on our bark. The banks 
were low and gently wooded. No Northern for- 
est, rude and gloomy with pines, stood stiffly and 
unsympathizingly watching the graceful water, but 
cheerful groves and delicate coppices opened in 
vistas where level sunlight streamed, and barred 
the river with light, between belts of lightsome 
shadow. We felt no breeze, but knew of one, 
keeping pace with us, by a tremor in the birches 
as it shook them. On we drifted, mile after mile, 
languidly over sweet calms. One would seize his 
paddle, and make our canoe quiver for a few spas- 
modic moments. But it seemed needless and im- 
pertinent to toil, when noiselessly and without any 
show of energy the water was bearing us on, over 
rich reflections of illumined cloud and blue sky, 
and shadows of feathery birches, bearing us on so 
quietly that our passage did not shatter an}'' fair 
image, but only drew it out upon the tremors of 
the water. 

So, placid and beautiful as an interview of flrst 
love, went on our first meeting with this Northern 
river. But water, the feminine element, is so mo- 
bile and impressible that it must protect itself by 
much that seems caprice and fickleness. We 
might be sure that the Penobscot would not al- 



64 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIE. 

ways flow so gently, nor all the way from forests 
to the sea conduct our bark without one shiver of 
panic, where rapids broke noisy and foaming over 
rocks that showed their grinding teeth at us. 

Sunset now streamed after us down the river. 
The arbor-vitae along the banks marked tracery 
more delicate than any ever wrought by deftest 
craftsman in western window of an antique fane. 
Brighter and richer than any tints that ever poured 
through painted oriel flowed the glories of sunset. 
Dear, pensive glooms of nightfall drooped from the 
zenith slowly down, narrowing twilight to a belt 
of dying flame. We were aware of the ever fresh 
surprise of starlight: the young stars were born 
again. 

Sweet is the charm of starlit sailing where no 
danger is. And in days when the Munki Manna- 
kens were foes of the pale-face, one might dash 
down rapids by night in the hurry of escape. Now 
the danger was before, not pursuing. We must 
camp before we were hurried into the first " rips '' 
of the stream, and before night made bush-ranging 
and camp-duties difficult. 

But these beautiful thickets of birch and alder 
along the bank, how to get through them ? We 
must spy out an entrance. Spots lovely and damp, 
circles of ferny grass beneath elms offered them- 
selves. At last, as to patience always, appeared 
the place of wisest choice. A little stream, the 
Ragmuff, entered the Penobscot. " Why Rag- 
muff? '' thought we, insulted. Just below its 



PENOBSCOT. 65 

month two spruceS were propylcea to a little glade, 
our very spot. We landed. Some hunters had 
once been there. A skeleton lodge and frame of 
poles for drying moose-hides remained. 

Like skilful campaigners, we at once distributed 
ourselves over our work. Cancut wielded the axe ; 
I the match-box ; Iglesias the batterie de cuisine. 
Ragmuif drifted one troutling and sundry chubby 
chub down to nip our hooks. We re-roofed our 
camp with its old covering of hemlock-bark, spread- 
ing over a light tent-cover we had provided. The 
last glow of twilight dulled away ; monitory mists 
hid the stars. 

Iglesias, as chef, with his two marmitons, had, 
meanwhile, been preparing supper. It was dark 
when he, the colorist, saw that fire with delicate 
touches of its fine brushes had painted all our 
viands to perfection. Then,' with the same fire 
stirred to illumination, and dashing masterly glows 
upon landscape and figures, the trio partook of the 
supper and named it sublime. 

Here follows the carte of the Restaurant Rag- 
mufi", — woodland fare, a banquet simple, but ele- 
gant : — 

POISSON. 

Truite. Meunier. 

Entrees. 

Pore frit au naturel. 

Cotelettes d'Elan. 

KOTI. 

Tetrao Canadensis. 



66 



LIFE m THE OPEN Al 



Dessert. 

Hard-Tack. Fromage. 

ViNS. 

RagmufF blanc. Penobscot mousseux. 

Th6. Chocolat de Bogota. 

Petit verre de Cognac. 

At that time I had a temporary quarrel with the 
frantic nineteenth century's best friend, tobacco, 
— and Iglesias, being totally at peace with himself 
and the world, never needs anodynes. Cancut, 
therefore, was the only cloud-blower. 

We two solaced ourselves with scorning civiliza- 
tion from our vantage-ground. We were beyond 
fences, away from the clash of town-clocks, the 
clink of town-dollars, the hiss of town-scandals. 
As soon as one is fairly in camp and has begun to 
eat with his fingers, he is free. He and truth are 
at the bottom of a well, — a hollow, fire-lighted 
cylinder of forest. While the manly man of the 
woods is breathing Nature like an Amreeta draught, 
is it anything less than the summum honum ? 

" Yet some call American life dull." 

" Ay, to dullards I " ejaculated Iglesias. 

Moose were said to haunt these regions. To- 
ward midnight our would-be moose-hunter paddled 
about up and down, seeking* them and finding 
not. The waters were too high. Lily-pads were 
drowned. There were no moose looming duskily 
in the shallows, to be done to death at their 
banquet. They were up in the pathless woods, 
browsing on leaves and deappetizing with bit- 



PENOBSCOT. 67 

ter bark. Starlight paddling over reflected stars 
was enchanting, but somniferous. We gave up 
our vain quest and glided softly home, — already 
we called it home, — toward the faint embers of 
our fire. Then all slept, as only woodmen sleep, 
save when for moments Cancut's trumpet-tones 
sounded alarums, and we others awoke to punch 
and batter the snorer into silence. 

In due time, bird and cricket whistled and chirped 
the reveille. We sprang from our lair. We dipped 
in the river and let its gentle friction polish us more 
luxuriously than ever did any hair-gloved polisher 
of an Oriental bath. Our joints crackled for them- 
selves as we beat the current. From bath like this 
comes no unmanly kief, no sensuous, slumberous, 
dreamy indifference, but a nervous, intent, keen, 
joyous activity. A day of deeds is before us, and 
we would be doing. 

When we issue from the Penobscot, from our 
baptism into a new life, we need no valet for elab- 
orate toilet. Attire is simple, when the woods are 
the tiring-room. 

When we had taken off the water and put on our 
clothes, we simultaneously thought of breakfast. 
Like a circle of wolves around the bones of a ban- 
quet, the embers of our fire were watching each 
other over the ashes ; we had but to knock their 
heads together and fiery fighting began. The 
skirmish of the brands boiled our coffee and fried 
our pork, and we embarked and shoved off. A thin 
blue smoke, floating upward, for an hour or two, 



68 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

marked our bivouac ; soon this had gone out, and 
the banks and braes of Ragmuff were lonely as if 
never a biped had trodden them. Nature drops 
back to solitude as easily as man to peace ; — how 
little this fair globe would miss mankind I 

The Penobscot was all asteam with morning 
mist. It was blinding the sun with a matinal obla- 
tion of incense. A crew of the profane should not 
interfere with such act of worship. Sacrilege is 
perilous, whoever be the God. We were instantly 
punished for irreverence. The first "rips'' came 
up-stream under cover of the mist, and took us by 
surprise. As we were paddling along gently, we 
suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a boiling 
rapid. Gnashing rocks, with cruel foam upon their 
lips, sprang out of the obscure, eager to tear us. 
Great jaws of ugly blackness snapped about us, as 
if we were introduced into a coterie of crocodiles. 
Symplegades clanged together behind ; mighty 
gulfs, below seducing bends of smooth water, 
awaited us before. We were in for it. We spun, 
whizzed, dashed, leaped, "cavorted"; we did 
whatever a birch running the gantlet of whirl- 
pools and breakers may do, except the fatal finality 
of a somerset. That we escaped, and only escaped. 
We had been only reckless, not audacious ; and 
therefore peril, not punishment, befell us. The 
rocks smote our frail shallop ; they did not crush 
it. Foam and spray dashed in our faces ; solid 
fluid below the crest did not overwhelm us. There 
we were, presently, in water tumultuous, but not 



PENOBSCOT. 69 

frantic. There we were, three men floating in a 
birch, not floundering in a maelstrom, — on the wa- 
ter, not under it, — sprinkled, not drowned, — and 
in a wild wonder how we got into it and how we 
got out of it. 

Cancut's paddle guided us through. Unwiehly 
he may have been in person, but he could wield his 
weapon well. '^A.nd so, by luck and skill, we were 
not drowned in the magnificent uproar of the rapid. 
Success, that strange stirabout of Providence, ac- 
cident, and courage, were ours. But when we 
came to the next cascading bit, though the mist 
had now lifted, we lightened the canoe by two 
men's avoirdupois, that it might dance, and not 
blunder heavily, might seek the safe shallows, 
away from the dangerous bursts of mid-current, 
and choose passages where Cancut, with the set- 
ting-pole, could let it gently down. So Iglesias 
and I plunged through the labyrinthine woods, the 
stream along. 

Not long after our little episode of buffeting, we 
shot out again upon smooth water, and soon, for it 
is never smooth but it is smoothest, upon a lake, 
Chesuncook. 



70 



LIFE m THE OPEN AIR. 



CHAPTER IX 



CHESUNCOOK. 



Chesuncook is a '' bulge '^ of the Penobscot : so 
much for its topography. It is deep in the woods, 
except that some miles from its opening there is a 
lumbering-station, with house and barns. In the 
wilderness, man makes for man by a necessity of 
human instinct. We made for the log-houses. We 
found there an ex-barkeeper of a certain well-known 
New York cockney coffee-house, promoted into a 
frontiersman, but mindful still of flesh-pots. Poor 
fellow, he was still prouder that he had once tossed 
the foaming cocktail than that he could now fell 
the forest-monarch. Mixed drinks were dearer to 
him than pure air. When we entered the long, 
low log-cabin, he was boiling doughnuts, as was 
to be expected. In certain regions of America 
every cook who is not baking pork and beans is 
boiling doughnuts, just as in certain other gas- 
tronomic quarters frijoles alternate with tortillas. 

Doughnuts, like peaches, must be eaten with the 
dew upon them. Caught as they come bobbing 
up in the bubbling pot, I will not say that they 
are despicable. Woodsmen and canoemen, compe- 
tent to pork and beans, can master also the alterna- 
tive. The ex-barkeeper was generous with these 
brown and glistening langrage-shot, and aimed 
volley after volley at our mouths. Nor was he 



CHESUNCOOK. 71 

content with giving us our personal fill ; into every 
crevice of our firkin he packed a pellet of future 
indigestion. Besides this result of foraging, we 
took the hint from a visible cow that milk might be 
had. Of this also the ex-barkeeper served us out 
galore, sighing that it was not the punch of his 
metropolitan days. We put our milk in our tea- 
pot, and thus, with all the ravages of the past 
made good, we launched again upon Chesuncook. 

Chesuncook, according to its quality of lake, had 
no aid to give us with current. Paddling all a 
hot August midday over slothful water would be 
tame, day-laborer's work. But there was a breeze. 
Good I Come, kind Zephyr, fill our red blanket- 
sail I Cancut's blanket in the bow became a sub- 
stitute for Cancut's paddle in the stern. We swept 
along before the wind, unsteadily, over Lake Che- 
suncook, at sea in a bowl, — ''rolled to starboard, 
rolled to larboard,'^ in our keelless craft. Zephyr 
only followed us, mild as he was strong, and strong 
as he was mild. Had he been puffy, it would have 
been all over with us. But the breeze only sang 
about our way, and shook the water out of sunny 
calm. Katahdin to the north, a fair blue pyramid, 
lifted higher and stooped forward more imminent, 
yet still so many leagues away that his features 
were undefined, and the gray of his scalp undistin- 
guishable from the green of his beard of forest. 
Every mile, however, as we slid drowsily over the 
hot lake, proved more and more that we were not 
befooled, — Iglesias by memory, and I by anticipa- 



72 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

tion. Katahdin lost nothing by approach, as some 
of the grandees do : as it grew bigger, it grew bet- 
ter. 

Twenty miles, or so, of Chesuncook, of sun-cooked 
Chesuncook, we traversed by the aid of our blanket- 
sail, pleasantly wafted by the unboisterous breeze. 
Undrowned, unducked, as safe from the perils of 
the broad lake as we had come out of the defiles 
of the rapids, we landed at the carry below the 
dam at the lake's outlet. 

The skin of many a slaughtered varmint was 
nailed on its shingle, and the landing-place was 
carpeted with the fur. Doughnuts, ex-barkeepers, 
and civilization at one end of the lake, and here 
were muskrat-skins, trappers, and the primeval. 
Two hunters of moose, in default of their fern- 
horned, blubber-lipped game, had condescended 
to muskrat, and were making the lower end of 
Chesuncook fragrant with muskiness. 

It is surprising how hospitable and comrade a 
creature is man. The trappers of muskrats were 
charmingly brotherly. They guided us across the 
carry ; they would not hear of our being porters. 
" Pluck the superabundant huckleberry," said 
they, " while we, suspending your firkin and your 
traps upon the setting-pole, tote them, as the spies 
of Joshua toted the grape-clusters of the Promised 
Land." 

Cancut, for his share, carried the canoe. He 
wore it upon his head and shoulders. Tough work 
he found it, toiling through the underwood, and 



CHESUNCOOK. 13 

poking his way like an elongated and mobile mush- 
room through the thick shrubbery. Ever and 
anon, as Iglesias and I paused, we would be aware 
of the canoe thrusting itself above our heads in the 
covert, and a voice would come from an unseen 
head under its shell, — "It 's soul-breaking, carry- 
ing is I " 

The portage was short. We emerged from the 
birchen grove upon the river, below a brilliant cas- 
cading rapid. The water came flashing gloriously 
forward, a far other element than the tame, flat 
stuff" we had drifted slowly over all the dullish 
hours. Water on the go is nobler than water on 
the stand ; recklessness may be as fatal as stag- 
nation, but it is more heroic. 

Presently, over the edge, where the foam and 
spray were springing up into sunshine, our canoe 
suddenly appeared, and had hardly appeared, when, 
as if by one leap, it had passed the rapid, and was 
gliding in the stiller current at our feet. One of 
the muskrateers had relieved Cancut of his head- 
piece, and shot the lower rush of water. We 
again embarked, and, guided by the trappers in 
their own canoe, paddled out upon Lake Pepo- 
genus. 



74 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

CHAPTER X. 
RIP GENUS. 

RiPOGENUS is a tarn, a lovely oval tarn, within a 
rim of forest and hill ; and there behold, gioja I 
at its eastern end, stooping forward and filling the 
sphere, was Katahdin, large and alone. 

But we must hasten, for day wanes, and we 
must see and sketch this cloudless summit from 
terra firma. A mile and half-way down the lake, 
we landed at the foot of a grassy hill-side, where 
once had been a lumberman's station and hay-farm. 
It was abandoned now, and lonely in that deeper 
sense in which widowhood is lonelier than celibacy, 
a home deserted lonelier than a desert. Tumble- 
down was the never-painted house ; ditto its three 
barns. But, besides a camp, there were two things 
to be had here, — one certain, one possible, proba- 
ble even. The view, that was an inevitable cer- 
tainty ; Iglesias would bag that as his share of the 
plunder of Ripogenus. For my bagging, bears, 
perchance, awaited. The trappers had seen a bear 
near the barns. Cancut, in his previous visit, had 
seen a disappearance of bear. No sooner had the 
birch's bow touched lightly upon the shore than 
we seized our respective weapons, — • Iglesias his 
peaceful and creative sketch-book, I my warlike 
and destructive gun, — and dashed up the hill-side. 

I made for the barns to catch Bruin napping or 



RIPOGENUS. 75 

lolling in the old hay. I entertain a vendetta to- 
ward the ursine family. I had a duello, pistol 
against claw, with one of them in the mountains 
of Oregon, and have nothing to show to point the 
moral and adorn the tale. My antagonist of that 
hand-to-hand fight received two shots, and then 
dodged into cover and was lost in the twilight. 
Soon or late in my life, I hoped that I should 
avenge this evasion. Ripogenus would, perhaps, 
give what the Nachchese Pass had taken away. 

Vain hope I I was not to i)e an ursicide. I 
begin to fear that I shall slay no other than my 
proper personal bearishness. I did my duty for 
another result at Ripogenus. I bolted audaciously 
into every barn. I made incursions into the woods 
around. I found the mark of the beast, not the 
beast. He had not long ago decamped, and was 
now, perhaps, sucking the meditative paw hard-by 
in an arbor of his bear-garden. 

After a vain hunt, I gave up Beast and turned to 
Beauty. I looked about me, seeing much. 

Foremost I saw a fellow-man, my comrade, 
fondled by breeze and brightness, and whispered 
to by all sweet sounds. I saw Iglesias below me, 
on the slope, sketching. He was preserving the 
scene at its hel momento. I repented more bitterly 
of my momentary falseness to Beauty while I saw 
him so constant. 

Furthermore, I saw a landscape of vigorous sim- 
plicity, easy to comprehend. .By mellow sunset 
the grass slope of the old farm seemed no longer 



76 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

tanned and rusty, but ripened. The oval lake was 
blue and calm, and that is already much to say ; 
shadows of the western hills were growing over it, 
but flight after flight of illumined cloud soared 
above, to console the sky and the water for the 
coming of night. Northward, a forest darkled, 
whose glades of brightness I could not see. East- 
ward, the bank mounted abruptly to a bare fire- 
swept table-land, whereon a few dead trees stood, 
parched and ghostly skeletons draped with rags 
of moss. 

Furthermost and topmost, I saw Katahdin twenty 
miles away, a giant undwarfed by any rival. The 
remainder landscape was only minor and judiciously 
accessory. The hills were low before it, the lake 
lowly, and upright above lake and hill lifted the 
mountain pyramid. Isolate greatness tells. There 
were no underling mounts about this mountain-in- 
chief. And now on its shoulders and crest sunset 
shone, glowing. Warm violet followed the glow, 
soothing away the harshness of granite lines. Lu- 
minous violet dwelt upon the peak, while below the 
clinging forests were purple in sheltered gorges, 
where they could climb nearer the summit, loved 
of light, and lower down gloomed green and som- 
bre in the shadow. 

Meanwhile, as I looked, the quivering violet rose 
higher and higher, and at last floated away like 
a disengaged flame. A smouldering blue dwelt 
upon the peak. Ashy-gray overcame the blue. As 
dusk thickened and stars trembled into sight, the 



RIPOGENUS. 77 

gray grew luminous. Katahdin^s mighty presence 
seemed to absorb such dreamy glimmers as float in 
limpid night-airs : a faint glory, a twilight of its 
own, clothed it. King of the daylit-world, it be- 
came queen of the dimmer realms of night, and 
like a woman-queen it did not disdain to stoop and 
study its loveliness in the polished lake, and stoop- 
ing thus it overhung the earth, a shadowy creature 
of gleam and gloom, an eternized cloud. 

I sat staring and straying in sweet reverie, until 
the scene before me was dim as metaphysics. 
Suddenly a flame flashed up in the void. It grew 
and steadied, and dark objects became visible 
about it. In the loneliness — for Iglesias had dis- 
appeared — I allowed myself a moment's luxury 
of superstition. Were these the Cyclops of Katah- 
din ? Possibly. Were they Trolls forging dia- 
bolic enginery, or Gypsies of Yankeedom ? I will 
see, — and went tumbling down the hill-side. 

As I entered the circle about the cooking-fire of 
drift-wood by the lake, Iglesias said, — 

" The beef-steak and the mutton-chops will do 
for breakfast ; now, then, with your bear I '' 

" Haw, haw I '' gufiawed Cancut ; and the sound, 
taking the lake at a stride, found echoes every- 
where, till he grew silent and peered suspiciously 
into the dark. 

" There 's more bears raound 'n yer kin shake a 
stick at,'' said one of the muskrateers. " I would 
n't ricommend yer to stir 'em up naow, haowlin' 
like that." 



78 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIK. 

'' I meant it for laJfEn'/' said Cancut, humbly. 

*' Ef yer call that 'ere larfin', couldn't yer cry a 
little to kind er slick daown the bears ? " said the 
trapper. 

Ig-lesias now invited us to chocolat a la creme, 
made with the boon of the ex-barkeeper. I sup- 
pose I may say, without flattery, that this .tipple 
was marvellous. What a pity Nature spoiled a 
cook by making the muddler of that chocolate a 
painter of grandeurs I When Fine Art is in a 
man's nature, it must exude, as pitch leaks from 
a pine-tree. Our muskrat-hunters partook injudi- 
ciously of this unaccustomed dainty, and were 
visited with indescribable Nemesis. They had 
never been acclimated to chocolate, as had Iglesias 
and I, by sipping it under the shade of the mimosa 
and the palm. 

Up to a certain point, an unlucky hunter is more 
likely to hunt than a lucky. Satiety follows more 
speedily upon success than despair upon failure. 
Let us thank Heaven for that, brethren dear I I 
had bagged not a bear, and must needs satisfy my 
assassin instincts upon something with hoofs and 
horns. The younger trapper of muskrat, being 
young, was ardent, — being young, was hopeful, 
— being young, believed in exceptions to general 
rules, — and being young, believed that, given a 
good fellow with a gun. Nature would proAdde 
a victim. Therefore he proposed that we should 
canoe it along the shallows in this sweetest and 
stillest of all the nights. The senior shook his 



RIPOGENUS. 1Q 

head incredulously ; Iglesias shook his head nod- 
dingly. 

'' Since you have massacred all the bears/^ said 
Iglesias, " I will go lay me down in their lair in 
the barn. If you find me cheek-by-jowl with Ursa 
Major when you come back, make a pun and he 
will go.'' 

It was stiller than stillness upon the lake. Ri- 
pogenus, it seemed, had never listened to such 
silence as this. Calm never could have been so 
beyond the notion of calm. Stars in the empyrean 
and stars in Ripogenus winked at each other across 
ninety-nine billions of leagues as uninterruptedly 
as boys at a boarding-^hool table. 

I knelt amidships in the birch with gun and 
rifle on either side. The pilot gave one stroke of 
his paddle, and we floated out upon what seemed 
the lake. Whatever we were poised and floating 
upon he hesitated to shatter with another dip of 
his paddle, lest he should shatter the thin basis and 
sink toward heaven and the stars. 

Presently the silence seemed to demand gentle 
violence, and the unwavering water needed slight 
tremors to teach it the tenderness of its calm ; 
then my guide used his blade, and cut into glassi- 
ness. We crept noiselessly along by the lake- 
edge, within the shadows of the pines. With 
never a plash we slid. Rare drops fell from the 
cautious paddle and tinkled on the surface, over- 
shot, not parted by, our imponderable passage. 
Sometimes from far within the forest would come 



80 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

sounds of rustling branches or crackling twigs. 
Somebody of life approaches with stealthy tread. 
Gentlier, even gentlier, my steersman 1 Take up 
no pearly drop from the lake, mother of pearliness, 
lest falling it sound too loudly. Somewhat comes. 
Let it come unterrified to our ambush among the 
shadows by the shore. 

Somewhat, something, somebody was coming, 
perhaps, but some other thing or body thwarted it 
and it came not. To glide over glassiness while 
uneventful moments link themselves into hours is 
monotonous. Night and stillness laid their sooth- 
ing spell upon me. I was entranced. I lost myself 
out of time and space, and seemed to be floating 
unimpelled and purposeless, nowhere in Forever. 

Somewhere in Now I suddenly found myself. 

There he was I There was the moose trampling 
and snorting hard by, in the shallows of Ripogenus, 
trampling out of being the whole nadir of stars, 
making the world conscious of its lost silence by 
the death of silence in tumult. 

I trembled with sudden eagerness. I seized my 
gun. In another instant I should have lodged the 
fatal pellet I when a voice whispered over my 
shoulder, — "I kinder guess yer Ve ben asleep an' 
dreamin', ha'n't yer ? " 

So I had. 

Never a moose came down to cool his clumsy 
snout in the water and swallow reflections of stars. 
Never a moose abandoned dry-browse in the bitter 
woods for succulent lily-pads, full in their cells and 



EIPOGENUS. 81 

veins of water and sunlight. Till long past mid- 
night we paddled and watched and listened, whis- 
perless. In vain. At last, as we rounded a point, 
the level gleam of our dying camp-fire athwart 
the water reminded us of passing hours and trav- 
eller duties, of rest to-night and toil to-morrow. 

My companions, fearless' as if there were no 
bears this side of Ursa Major, were bivouacked in 
one of the barns. There I entered skulkingly, as 
a gameless hunter may, and hid my untrophied 
head beneath a mound of ancient hay, not without 
the mustiness of its age. 

No one clawed us, no one chawed us, that night. 
A Kipogenus chill awaked the whole party with 
early dawn. We sprang from our nests, shook the 
hay-seed out of our hair, and were full-dressed 
without more ceremony, ready for whatever grand 
sensation Nature might purvey for our aesthetic 
breakfast. 

Nothing is ever as we expect. When we stepped 
into out-of-doors, looking for Kipogenus, a lake of 
Maine, we found not a single aquatic fact in the 
landscape. Kipogenus, a lake, had mizzled, (as 
the Americans say,) literally mizzled. Our simpli- 
fied view comprised a grassy hill with barns, and 
a stern positive pyramid, surely Katahdin ; aloft, 
beyond, above, below, thither, hither, and yon. 
Fog, — not fog, but FOG. 

Kipogenus, the water-body, had had aspirations, 
and a boon of brief transfiguration into a cloud- 
body had been granted it by Nature, who grants 

4# F 



82 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

to every terrestrial essence prophetic experiences 
of what it one day would be. 

In short, and to repeat, Ripogenus had trans- 
muted itself into vapor, and filled the valley full 
to our feet. A faint wind had power to billow 
this mist-lake, and drive cresting surges up against 
the eastern hill-side, over which they sometimes 
broke, and, involving it totally, rolled clear and 
free toward Katahdin, where he stood hiding the 
glows of sunrise. Leagues higher up than, the 
mountain rested a presence of cirri, already white 
and luminous with full daylight, and from them 
drooped linking wreaths of orange mist, clinging 
to the rosy-violet granite of the peak. 

Up clomb and sailed Ripogenus and befogged 
the whole ; then we condescended to breakfast. 



CHAPTER XI. 

TOWARD KATAHDIN. 

Singularly enough, mill-dams are always found 
below mill-ponds. Analogously in the Maine rivers, 
below the lakes, rapids are. Rapids too often 
compel carries. While we breakfasted without 
steak of bear or cutlet of moose, Ripogenus grad- 
ually retracted itself, and became conscious again 
of what poetry there is in a lake's pause and a 



TOWARD KATAHDIN. 83 

rapid's flow. Fog condensed into water, and water 
submitting to its destiny went cascading down 
through a wild defile where no birch could follow. 

The Ripogenus carry is three miles long, a faint 
path through thickets. 

" First half," said Cancut, " 's plain enough ; 
but after that 't would take a philosopher with his 
spectacles on to find it." 

This was discouraging. Philosophers twain we 
might deem ourselves ; but what is a craftsman 
without tools ? And never a goggle had we. 

.But the trappers of muskrats had become our 
fast friends. They insisted upon lightening our 
loads over the brambly league. This was kindly. 
Cancut's elongated head-piece, the birch, was his 
share of the burden ; and a bag of bread, a firkin of 
various grub, damp blankets for three, and multitu- 
dinous traps, seemed more than two could carry at 
one trip over this longest and roughest of portages. 

We paddled from the camp to the lake-foot, and 
there, while the others compacted the portables 
for portage, Iglesias and I, at cost of a ducking 
with mist-drops from the thickets, scrambled up a 
crag for a supreme view of the fair lake and the 
clear mountain. And we did well. Katahdin, from 
the hill guarding the exit of the Penobscot from 
Eipogenus, is eminent and emphatic, a signal and 
solitary pyramid, grander than any below the 
realms of the unchangeable, more distinctly moun- 
tainous than any mountain of those that stop short 
of the venerable honors of eternal snow. 



84 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

We trod the trail, we others, easier than Cancut. 
He found it hard to thread the mazes of an over- 
grown path and navigate his canoe at the same 
time. *' Better,'' thought he, as he staggered and 
plunged and bumped along, extricating his boat- 
bonnet now from a bower of raspberry-bushes, 
now from the branches of a brotherly birch-tree, — 
''better,'' thought he, "were I seated in what I 
bear, and bounding gayly over the billow. Peril 
is better than pother." 

Bushwhacking thus for a league, we circum- 
vented the peril, and came upon the river flowing 
fair and free. The trappers said adieu, and launched 
us. Back then they went to consult their traps 
and flay their fragrant captives, and we shot for- 
ward. 

That was a day all poetry and all music. Moun- 
tain airs bent and blunted the noonday sunbeams. 
There was shade of delicate birches on either hand, 
whenever we loved to' linger. Our feather-shallop 
went dancing on, fleet as the current, and when- 
ever a passion for speed came after moments of 
luxurious sloth, we could change floating at the 
river's will into leaps and chasing, with a few 
strokes of the paddle. All was untouched, un- 
visited wilderness, and we from bend to bend the 
first discoverers. So we might fancy ourselves ; 
for civilization had been here only to cut pines, not 
to plant houses. Yet these fair curves, and liberal 
reaches, and bright rapids of the birchen-bowered 
river were only solitary, not lonely. It is never 



TOWARD KATAHDIN. 80 

lonely with Nature. Without unnatural men or 
unnatural beasts, she is capital society by herself. 
And so we found her, — a lovely being in perfect 
toilet, which I describe, in an indiscriminating, 
masculine way, by saying that it was a forest and 
a river and lakes and a mountain and doubtless 
sky, all made resplendent by her judicious disposi- 
tion of a most becoming light. Iglesias and I, 
being old friends, were received into close inti- 
macy. She smiled upon us unaffectedly, and had 
a thousand exquisite things to say, drawing us out 
also, with feminine tact, to say our best things, 
and teaching us to be conscious, in her presence, 
of more delicate possibilities of refinement and a 
tenderer poetic sense. So we voyaged through 
the sunny hours, and were happy. 

Yet there was no monotony in our progress. 
We could not always drift and glide. Sometimes 
we must fight our way. Below the placid reaches 
were the inevitable " rips ^' and rapids : some we 
could' shoot without hitting anything ; some would 
hit us heavily, did we try to shoot. Whenever 
the rocks in the current were only as thick as the 
plums in a boarding-school pudding, we could ven- 
ture to run the gantlet ; whenever they multiplied 
to a school-boy's ideal, we were arrested. Just at 
the brink of peril we would sweep in by an eddy 
into a shady pool by the shore. At such spots we 
found a path across the carry. Cancut at once 
proceeded to bonnet himself with the trickling 
bjrch. Iglesias and I took up the packs and hur- 



86 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

ried on with minds intent on berries. Berries we 
always found, — blueberries covered with a cloudy 
bloom, blueberries pulpy, saccharine, plenteous. 

Often, when a portage was not quite necessary, 
a dangerous bit of white water would require the 
birch to be lightened. Cancut must steer her 
alone over the foam, while we, springing ashore, 
raced through the thick of the forest, tore through 
the briers, and plunged through the punk of trees 
older than history, now rotting where they fell, 
slain by Time the Giganticide. Cancut then had 
us at advantage. Sometimes we had laughed at 
him, when he, a good-humored malaprop, made 
vague clutches at the thread of discourse. Now 
suppose he should take a fancy to drop down 
stream and leave us. What then ? Berries then, 
and little else, unless we had a chance at a trout 
or a partridge. It is not cheery, but dreary, to be 
left in pathlessness, blanketless, guideless, and 
with breadths of lake and mountain and Nature, 
shaggy and bearish, between man and man. With 
the consciousness of a latent shudder in our hearts 
at such a possibility, we parted brier and bramble 
until the rapid was passed, we scujBfled hastily 
through to the river-bank, and there always, in 
some quiet nook, was a beacon of red-flannel shirt 
among the green leaves over the blue and shadowy 
water, and always the fast-sailing Cancut awaiting 
us, making the woods resound to amicable hails, 
and ready again to be joked and to retaliate. 

Such alternations made our voyage a charming 



TOWAED KATAHDIN. 87 

olla. We had the placid glide, the fleet dash, the 
wild career, the pause, the landing, the agreeable 
interlude of a portage, and the unburdened stam- 
pede along-shore. Thus we won our way, or our 
way wooed us on, until, in early afternoon, a lovely 
lakelet opened before us. The fringed shores re- 
tired, and, as we shot forth upon wider calm, lo, 
Katahdin I unlooked for, at last, as a revolution. 
Our boat ruffled its shadow, doing pretty violence 
to its dignity, that we might know the greater 
grandeur of the substance. There was a gentle 
agency of atmosphere softening the bold forms of 
this startling neighbor, and giving it distance, 
lest we might fear it would topple and crush us. 
Clouds, level below, hid the summit and towered 
aloft. Among them we might imagine the moun- 
tain rising with thousands more of feet of heaven- 
piercing height : there is one degree of sublimity 
in mystery, as there is another degree in certitude. 
We lay to in a shady nook, just off Katahdin's 
reflection in the river, while Iglesias sketched him. 
Meanwhile I, analyzing my view, presently discov- 
ered a droll image in the track of a land-avalanche 
down the front. It was a comical fellow, a little 
giant, a colossal dwarf, six hundred feet high, and 
should have been thrice as tall, had it had any 
proper development, — for out of his head grew 
two misdirected skeleton legs, " hanging down and 
dangling.'' The countenance was long, elfin, sneer- 
ing, solemn, as of a truculent demon, saddish for 
his trade, an ashamed, but unrepentant rascal. He 



88 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

had two immense erect ears, and in his boisterous 
position had suffered a loss of hair, wearing nothing 
save an impudent scalp-lock. A very grotesque 
personage. Was he the guardian imp, the legen- 
dary Eft of Katahdin, scoffing already at us as 
verdant, and warning that he would make us un- 
happy, if we essayed to appear in demon realms 
and on Brocken heights without initiation ? 

*' A terrible pooty mountain, ^^ Cancut observed ; 
and so it is. 

Not to fail in topographical duty, I record, that 
near this lakelet flows in the river Sowadehunk, and 
not far below, a sister streamlet, hardly less melo- 
diously named Ayboljockameegus. Opposite the 
latter we landed and encamped, with Katahdin full 
in front, and broadly visible. 



CHAPTER XII. 



CAMP KATAHDIN. 



Our camping-place was worthy of its view. On 
the bank, high and dry, a noble yellow birch had 
been strong enough to thrust back the forest, 
making a glade for its own private abode. Other 
travellers had already been received in this natural 
pavilion. We had had predecessors, and they had 
built them a hut, a half roof of hemlock bark, rest- 



CAMP KATAHDIN. 89^ 

ing on a frame. Time had developed the wrinkles 
in this covering into cracks, and cracks only wait 
to be leaks. First, then, we must mend our man- 
sion. Material was at hand ; hemlocks, with a 
back-load of bark, stood ready to be disburdened. 
In August they have worn their garment so long 
that they yield it unwillingly. Cancut's axe, how- 
ever, was insinuating, not to say peremptory. He 
peeled off and brought great scales of rough purple 
roofing, and we disposed them, according to the 
laws of forest architecture, upon our cabin. It 
became a good example of the renaissance. Storm, 
if such a traveller were approaching, was shut out 
at top and sides ; our blankets could become cur- 
tains in front and completely hide us from that un- 
welcome vagrant, should he peer about seeking 
whom he might duck and what he might damage. 
Our lodge, built, must be furnished. We need a 
luxurious carpet, couch, and bed ; and if we have 
these, will be content without secondary articles. 
Here, too, material was ready, and only the artist 
wanting, to use it. While Cancut peeled the hem- 
locks, Iglesias and I stripped off armfuls of boughs 
and twigs from the spruces to " bough down '^ our 
camp. '' Boughing down'^ is shingling the floor 
elaborately with evergreen foliage ; and when it is 
done well, the result counts among the high luxu- 
ries of the globe. .As the feathers of this bed are 
harsh stems covered with leafage, the process of 
bed-making must be systematic, the stems thor- 
oughly covered, and the surface smooth and elastic. 



90 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

I have slept on the various beds of the world, — in 
a hammock, in a pew, on German feathers, on a 
bear-skin, on a mat, on a hide ; all, all give but a 
feeble, restless, unrecreating slumber, compared to 
the spruce or hemlock bed in a forest of Maine. 
This is fragrant, springy, soft, well-fitting, better 
than any Sybarite's couch of uncrumpled rose- 
leaves. It sweetly rustles when you roll, and, by a 
gentle titillation with the little javelin-leaves, keeps 
up a pleasant electricity over the cuticle. Rheu- 
matism never, after nights on such a bed ; agues 
never ; vigor, ardor, fervor, always. 

We despatched our camp-building and bed-making 
with speed, for we had a purpose. The Penobscot 
was a very beautiful river, and the Ayboljockamee- 
gus a very pretty stream ; and if there is one place 
in the world where trout, at certain seasons, are 
likely to be found, it is in a beautiful river at the 
mouth of a pretty stream. Now we wanted trout ; 
it was in the programme that something more deli- 
cate than salt-pork should grace our banquets be- 
fore Katahdin. Cancut sustained our a priori, that 
trout were waiting for us over by the Aybol. By 
this time the tree-shadows, so stiff at noon, began 
to relax and drift down stream, cooling the surface. 
The trout could leave their shy lairs down in the 
chilly deeps, and come up without fear of being 
parboiled. Besides, as evening came, trout thought 
of their supper, as we did of ours. 

Hereupon I had a new sensation. We made 
ready our flies and our rods, and embarked, as I 



CAMP KATAHDIN. 91 

supposed, to be ferried across and fish from terra 
firma. But no. Cancut dropped anchor very 
quietly opposite the Aybol's mouth. Iglesias, the 
man of Maine experience, seemed naught surprised. 
We were to throw our lines, as it appeared, from 
the birch ; we were to peril our lives on the un- 
steady basis of a roly-poly vessel, — to keep our 
places and ballast our bowl, during the excitement 
of hooking pounds. Self-poise is an acrobatic feat, 
when a person, not loaded at the heels, undertakes 
trout-fishing from a birch. 

We threw our flies. Instantly at the lucky 
hackle something darted, seized it, and whirled to 
fly, with the unwholesome bit in its mouth, up the 
peaceful Ayboljockameegus. But the lucky man, 
and he happened to be the novice, forgot, while 
giving the capturing jerk of his hook, that his 
fulcrum was not solid rock.* The slight shell tilted, 
turned — over not quite, over enough to give 
everj^body a start. One lesson teaches the docile. 
Caution thereafter presided over our fishing. She 
told us to sit low, keep cool, cast gently, strike 
firmly, play lightly, and pull in steadily. So we 
did. As the spotted sparklers were rapidly trans- 
lated from water to a lighter element, a well-fed 
cheerfulness developed in our trio. We could not 
speak, for fear of breaking the spell ; we smiled 
at each other. Twenty-three times the smile went 
round. Twenty-three trout, and not a pigmy 
among them, lay at our feet. More fish for one 
dinner and breakfast would be waste and wanton 



92 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

self-indulgence. We stopped. And I must avow, 
not to claim too much heroism, that the iish had 
also stopped. So we paddled home contented. 

Then, Walton 1 Davy ! Scrope I ye 
fishers hard by taverns I luxury was ours of which 
ye know no more than a Chinaman does of music. 
Under the noble yellow birch we cooked our own 
fish. We used our scanty kitchen-battery with 
skill. We cooked Avith the high art of simplicity. 
Where Nature has done her best, only fools rush 
in to improve : on the salmonids, fresh and salt, 
she has lavished her creative refinements ; cookery 
should onty ripen and develop. From our silver 
gleaming pile of pounders, we chose the larger and 
the smaller for appropriate experiments. Then we 
tested our experiments ; we tasted our examples. 
Success. And success in science proves knowl- 
edge and skill. We feasted. The delicacy of our 
food made each feaster a finer essence. 

So we supped, reclined upon our couch of spruce- 
twigs. In our good cheer we pitied the Eft of Ka- 
tahdin : he might sneer, but he was supperless. 
We were grateful to Nature for the grand moun- 
tain, for the fair and sylvan woods, for the lovely 
river and what it had yielded us. 

By the time we had finished our flaky fare and 
sipped our chocolate from the Magdalena, Night 
announced herself, — Night, a jealous, dark lady, 
eclipsed and made invisible all her rivals, that she 
might solely possess us. Night's whispers lulled 
us. The rippling river, the rustling leaves, the 



CAMP KATAHDIN. 93 

hum of insects, grew more audible ; and these are 
gXMitle sounds that prove wide quietude in Nature, 
and tell man that the burr and buzz in his day- 
laboring brain have ceased, and he had better be 
breathing deep in harmony. So we disposed our- 
selves upon the fragrant couch of spruce-boughs, 
and sank slowly and deeper into sleep, as divers 
sink into the thick waters down below, into the 
dreamy waters far below the plunge of sunshine. 

By and by, as the time came for rising to the 
surface again, and the mind began to be half con- 
scious of facts without it, as the diver may half 
perceive light through thinning strata of sea, there 
penetrated through my last layers of slumber a 
pungent odor of wetted embers. It was raining 
quietly. Drip was the pervading sound, as if the 
rain-drops were counting aloud the leaves of the 
forest. Evidently a resolute and permanent wet- 
ting impended. On rainy days one does not climb 
Katahdin. Instead of rising by starlight, break- 
fasting by gray, and starting by rosy dawn, it 
would be policy to persuade night to linger long 
into the hours of a dull day. When daylight 
finally came, dim and sulky, there wa^ no rivalry 
among us which should light the fire. We did 
not leap, but trickled slowly forth into the inhos- 
pitable morning, all forlorn. Wet days in camp 
try "grit.'' ''Clear grit" brightens more crys- 
talline, the more it is rained upon : sham grit dis- 
solves into mud and water. 

Yankees, who take in pulverized granite with 



94 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

every breath of their native dust, are not likely to 
melt in a drizzle. We three certainly did not. 
We reacted stoutly against the forlorn weather, 
unpacking our internal stores of sunshine, as a 
camel in a desert draws water from his inner tank 
when outer water fails. We made the best of it. 
A breakfast of trout and trimmings looks nearly 
as well and tastes nearly as well in a fog as in a 
glare : that we proved by experience at Camp 
Katahdin. 

We could not climb the mountain dark and dim ; 
we would not be idle : what was to be done ? 
Much. Much for sport and for use. We shoul- 
dered the axe and sallied into the dripping forest. 
Only a faint smoke from the smouldering logs 
curled up among the branches of the yellow birch 
over camp. We wanted a big smoke, and chopped 
at the woods for fuel. Speaking for myself, I 
should say that our wood-work was ill done. Igle- 
sias smiled at my axe-handling, and Cancut at his, 
as chopping we sent chips far and wide. 

The busy, keen, short strokes of the axe re- 
sounded through the forest. When these had 
done their work, and the bungler paused amid his 
wasteful debris to watch his toil's result, first was 
heard a rustle of leaves, as if a passing whirlwind 
had alighted there ; next came the crack of burst- 
ing sinews ; then the groan of a great riving spasm, 
and the tree, decapitated at its foot, crashed to 
earth, with a vain attempt to clutch for support at 
the stiff, unpitying arms of its woodland brother- 
hood. 



CAMP KATAHDIN. 95 

Down was the tree, — fallen, but so it should not 
lie. This tree we proposed to promote from brute 
matter, mere lumber, downcast and dejected, into 
finer essence : fuel was to be made into fire. 

First, however, the fuel must be put into port- 
able shape. We top-sawyers went at our pros- 
trate and vanquished non-resistant, and without 
mercy mangled and dismembered him, until he 
was merely a bare trunk, a torso incapable of 
restoration. 

While we were thus busy, useful, and happy, 
the dripping rain, like a clepsydra, told off the 
morning moments. The dinner-hour drew nigh. 
We had determined on a feast, and trout were to 
be its daintiest dainty. But before we cooked our 
trout, we must, according to sage Kitchener's ad- 
vice, catch our trout. They were, we felt confi- 
dent, awaiting us in the refrigerate larder at 
hand. We waited until the confusing pepper of 
a shower had passed away and left the water 
calm. Then softly and deftly we propelled our 
bark across to the Ayboljockameegus. We tossed 
to the fish humbugs of wool, silk, and feathers, 
gauds such as captivate the greedy or the guile- 
less. Again the '' gobemouches '^ trout, the fel- 
lows on the look-out for novelty, dashed up and 
swallowed disappointing juiceless morsels, and 
with them swallowed hooks. 

We caught an apostolic boat-load of beauties 
fresh and blooming as Aurora, silver as the morn- 
ing star, gemmy with eye-spots as a tiger-lily. 



96 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

feast most festal ! Iglesias, of course, was 
the great artist who devised and mainly executed 
it. As well as he could, he covered his pot and 
pan from the rain, admitting only enough to season 
each dish with gravy direct from the skies. As 
day had ripened, the banquet grew ripe. Then as 
day declined, we reclined on our triclinium of hem- 
lock and spruce boughs, and made high festival, 
toasting each other in the uninebriating flow of our 
beverages. Jollity reigned. Cancut fattened, and 
visibly broadened. Toward the veriest end of the 
banquet, we seemed to feel that there had been a 
slight sameness in its courses. The Bill of Fare, 
however, proved the freest variety. And at the 
close we sat and sipped our chocolate with utter- 
most content. No gargon, cringing, but firm, 
would here intrude with the unhandsome bill. 
Nothing to pay is the rarest of pleasures. This 
dinner we had caught ourselves, we had cooked 
ourselves, and had eaten for the benefit of our- 
selves and no other. There was nothing to re- 
pent of afterwards in the way of extravagance, 
and certainly nothing of indigestion. Indigestion 
in the forest primeval, in the shadow of Katah- 
din, is impossible. 

While we dined, we talked of our to-morrow's 
climb of Katahdin. We were hopeful. We dis- 
believed in obstacles. To-morrow would be fine. 
We would spring early from our elastic bed and 
stride topwards. Iglesias nerved himself and me 
with a history of his ascent some years before, up 



UP KATAHDIN. 97 

tlie eastern side of the mountain. He had left the 
house of Mr. Hunt, the outsider at that time of 
Eastern Maine, with a squad of lumbermen, and 
with them tramped up the furrow of a land-ava- 
lanche to the top, spending wet and ineffective 
days in the dripping woods, and vowing then to 
return and study the mountain from our present 
camping-spot. I recalled also the first recorded 
ascent of the Natardin or Catardin Mountain by 
Mr. Turner in 1804, printed in the Massachusetts 
Historical Society's Collections, and identified the 
stream up whose valley he climbed with the Ay- 
boljockameegus. Cancut offered valuable contri- 
butions to our knowledge from his recent ascent 
with our Boston predecessors. To-morrow we 
would verify our recollections and our fancies. 
And so good night, and to our spruce bed. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

UP KATAHDIN. 

Next morning, when we awoke, just before the 
gray of dawn, the sky was clear and scintillating ; 
but there was a white cotton night-cap on the head 
of Katahdin. As we inspected him, he drew his 
night-cap down farther, hinting that he did not 
wish to see the sun that day. When a mountain 

5 G 



98 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

is thus in the sulks after a storm, it is as well not 
to disturb him : he will not offer the prize of a 
view. Experience taught us this : but then expe- 
rience is only an empiric at the best. 

Besides, whether Katahdin were bare-headed or 
cloud-capped, it would be better to blunder upward 
than lounge all day in camp and eat Sybaritic din- 
ners. We longed for the nervy climb. We must 
have it. *'XJp!" said tingling blood to brain. 
'^ Dash through the forest I Grasp the crag, and 
leap the cleft ! Sweet flash forth the streamlets 
from granite fissures. To breathe the winds that 
smite the peaks is life." 

As soon as dawn bloomed in the woods we 
breakfasted, and ferried the river before sunrise. 
The ascent subdivides itself into five zones. 1. A 
scantily wooded acclivity, where bears abound. 
2. A dense, swampy forest region. 3. Steep, mossy 
mountain-side, heavily wooded. 4. A belt of dwarf 
spruces, nearly impenetrable. 5. Eagged rock. 

Cancut was our leader to-day. There are by far 
too many blueberries in the first zone. No one, 
of course, intends to dally, but the purple beauties 
tempted, and too often we were seduced. Still 
such yielding spurred us on to hastier speed, when 
we looked up after delay and saw the self-denying 
far ahead. 

To write an epic. or climb a mountain is merely 
a dogged thing ; the result is more interesting to 
most than the process. Mountains, being cloud- 
compellers, are rain-shedders, and the shed water 



UP KATAHDIN. 99 

will not always flow with decorous gayety in dell 
or glen. Sometimes it stays bewildered in a bog, 
and here the climber must plunge. In the moist 
places great trees grow, die, fall, rot, and barri- 
cade the way with their corpses. Katahdin has to 
endure all the ills of mountain being, and we had 
all the usual difficulties to fight through doggedly. 
When we were clumsy, we tumbled and rose up 
torn. Still we plodded on, following a path blazed 
by the Bostonians, Cancut's late charge, and we 
grumblingly thanked them. 

Going up, we got higher and drier. The moun- 
tain-side became steeper than it could stay, and 
several land-avalanches, ancient or modern, crossed 
our path. It would be sad to think that all the 
eternal hills were crumbling thus, outwardly, un- 
less we knew that they bubble up inwardly as fast. 
Posterity is thus cared for io regard to the pictu- 
resque. Cascading streams also shot by us, carry- 
ing light and music. From them we stole refresh- 
ment, and did not find the waters mineral and as- 
tringent, as Mr. Turner, the first climber, calumni- 
ously asserts. 

The trees were still large and surprisingly paral- 
lel to the mountain wall. Deep soft moss covered 
whatever was beneath, and sometimes this would 
yield and let the foot measure a crevice. Perilous 
pitfalls ; but we clambered unharmed. The moss, 
so rich, deep, soft, and earthily fragrant, was a 
springy stair-carpet of a steep stairway. And 
sometimes when the carpet slipped and the state of 



I c: 



100 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

heels over head seemed imminent, we held to the 
baluster-trees, as one after wassail clings to the 
lamp-post. 

Even on this minor mountain the law of diminish- 
ing vegetation can be studied. The great trees 
abandoned us, and stayed indolently down in shel- 
ter. Next the little wiry trees ceased to be the 
comrades of our climb. They were no longer to 
be seen planted upon jutting crags, and, bold as 
standard-bearers, inciting us to mount higher. Big 
spruces, knobby with balls of gum, dwindled away 
into little ugly dwarf spruces, hostile, as dwarfs 
are said to be always, to human comfort. They 
grew man-high, and hedged themselves together 
into a dense thicket. We could not go under, nor 
over, nor through. To traverse them at all, we 
must recall the period when we were squirrels or 
cats, in some former state of being. 

Somehow we pierced, as man does ever, whether 
he owes it to the beast or the man in him. From 
time to time, when in this struggle we came to an 
open point of rock, we would remember that we 
were on high, and turn to assure ourselves that 
nether earth was where we had left it. We always 
found it in situ, in belts green, white, and blue, a 
tricolor of woods, water, and sky. Lakes were 
there without number, forest without limit. We 
could not analyze yet, for there was work to do. 
Also, whenever we paused, there was the old temp- 
tation, blueberries. Every outcropping ledge of- 
fered store of tonic, ozone-fed blueberries, or of 



UP KATAHDIN. 101 

mountain-cranberries, crimson and of concentrated 
flavor, or of the white snowberry, most delicate of 
fruits that grow. 

As we were creeping over the top of the dwarf 
wood, Cancut, who was in advance, suddenly dis- 
appeared ; he seemed to fall through a gap in the 
spruces, and we heard his voice calling in cavern- 
ous tones. We crawled forward and looked over. 
It was the upper camp of the Bostonians. They 
had profited by a hole in the rocks, and chopped 
away the stunted scrubs to enlarge it into a snug 
artificial abyss. It was snug, and so to the eye is 
a cell at Sing-Sing. If they were very misshapen 
Bostonians, they may have succeeded in lying there 
comfortably. I looked down ten feet into the 
rough chasm, and I saw, Gorpo di Bacco I I saw a 
cork. 

To this station our predecessors had come in an 
easy day's walk from the river ; here they had 
tossed through a night, and given a whole day to 
finish the ascent, returning hither again for a second 
night. As we purposed to put all this travel within 
one day, we could not stay and sympathize with 
the late tenants. A little more squirrel-like skip- 
ping and cat-like creeping over the spruces, and we 
were out among bulky boulders and rough debris 
on a shoulder of the mountain. Alas ! the higher, 
the more hopeless. Katahdin, as he had taken 
pains to inform us, meant to wear the veil all day. 
He was drawing down the white drapery about his 
throat and letting it fall over his shoulders. Sun 



102 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

and wind struggled mightily with his sulky fit ; 
sunshine rifted off bits of the veil, and wind seized, 
whirled them away, and, dragging them over the 
spruces below, tore them to rags. Evidently, if 
we wished to see the world, we mnst stop here and 
survey, before the growing vapor covered all. We 
climbed to the edge of Cloudland, and stood front- 
ing the semicircle of southward view. 

Katahdin's self is finer than what Katahdin sees. 
Katahdin is distinct, and its view is indistinct. It 
is a vague panorama, a mappy, unmethodic maze 
of water and woods, very roomy, very vast, very 
simple, — and these are capital qualities, but also 
quite monotonous. A lover of largeness and scope 
has the proper emotions stirred, but a lover of vari- 
ety very soon finds himself counting the lakes. It 
is a wide view, and it is a proud thing for a man 
six feet or less high, to feel that he himself, stand- 
ing on something he himself has climbed, and hav- 
ing Katahdin under his feet a mere convenience, 
can see all Maine. It does not make Maine less, 
but the spectator more, and that is a useful moral 
result. Maine's face, thus exposed, has almost no 
features ; there are no great mountains visible, 
none that seem more than green hillocks in the dis- 
tance. Besides sky, Katahdin's view contains only 
the two primal necessities of wood and water. 
Nowhere have I seen such breadth of solemn forest, 
gloomy, were it not for the cheerful interruption 
of many fair lakes, and bright ways of river linking 
them. 



UP KATAHDIN. 103 

Far away on the southern horizon we detected 
the heights of Mount Desert, our old familiar 
haunt. All the northern semicircle was lost to us 
by the fog. We lost also the view of the moun- 
tain itself. All the bleak, lonely, barren, ancient 
waste of the bare summit was shrouded in cold 
fog. The impressive gray ruin and Titanic havoc 
of a granite mountain-top, the heaped boulders, 
the crumbling crags, the crater-like depression^ 
the long stern reaches of sierra, the dark curving 
slopes channelled and polished by the storms and 
fine drifting mists of aeons, the downright plunge 
of precipices, all the savageness of harsh rock, un- 
softened by other vegetation than rusty moss and 
the dull green splashes of lichen, all this was hid- 
den, except when the mist, white and delicate 
where we stood, but thick and black above, opened 
whimsically and delusively, as mountain mists will 
do, and gave us vistas into the upper desolation. 
After such momentary rifts the mist thickened 
again, and swooped forward as if to involve our 
station ; but noon sunshine, reverberated from the 
plains and valleys and lakes below, was our ally ; 
sunshine checked the overcoming mist, and it 
stayed overhead, an unwelcome parasol, making 
our August a chilly November. Besides what our 
eyes lost, our minds lost, unless they had imagina- 
tion enough to create it, the sentiment of triumph 
and valiant energy that the man of body and soul 
feels upon the windy heights, the highest, whence 
he looks far and wide, like a master of realms, 



104 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

and knows that the world is his ; and they lost 
the sentiment of solemn joy that the man of soul 
recognizes as one of the surest intimations of 
immortality, stirring within him, whenever he is 
in the unearthly regions, the higher world. 

We stayed studying the pleasant solitude and 
dreamy breadth of Katahdin's panorama for a long 
time, and every moment the mystery of the mist 
above grew more enticing. Pride also was awa- 
kened. We turned from sunshine and Cosmos into 
fog and Chaos. We made ourselves quite misera- 
ble for naught. We clambered up into Nowhere, 
into a great, white, ghostly void. We saw nothing 
but the rough surfaces we trod. We pressed along 
crater-like edges, and all below was filled with mist, 
troubled and rushing upward like the smoke of a 
volcano. Up we went, — nothing but granite and 
gray dimness. Where we arrived we know not. 
It was a top, certainly : that was proved by the 
fact that there was nothing within sight. We 
cannot claim that it was the topmost top ; Kim- 
chinjinga might have towered within pistol-shot ; 
popgun-shot was our extremest range of vision, 
except for one instant, when a kind-hearted sun- 
beam gave us a vanishing glimpse of a white lake 
and breadth of forest far in the unknown North 
toward Canada. 

When we had thus reached the height of our 
folly and made nothing by it, we addressed our- 
selves to the descent, no wiser for our pains. 
Descent is always harder than ascent, for divine 



UP KATAHDIN. 105 

ambitions are stronger and more prevalent than 
degrading passions. And when Katahdin is be- 
fogged, descent is much more perilous than ascent. 
We edged along very cautiously by remembered 
landmarks the way we had come, and so, after a 
dreary march of a mile or so through desolation, 
issued into welcome sunshine and warmth at our 
point of departure. When I said ''we,'^ I did not 
include the gravestone pedler. He, like a sensi- 
ble fellow, had determined to stay and eat berries 
rather than breathe fog. While we wasted our 
time, he had made the most of his. He had cleared 
Katahdin's shoulders of fruit, and now, cuddled in 
a sunny cleft, slept the sleep of the well-fed. His 
red shirt was a cheerful beacon on our weary way. 
We took in the landscape with one slow, compre- 
hensive look, and, waking Cancut suddenly, (who 
sprang to his feet amazed, and cried " Fire I '^) we 
dashed down the mountain-side. 

It was long after noon ; we were some dozen of 
miles from camp ; we must speed. No glissade 
was possible, nor plunge such as travellers make 
down through the ash-heaps of Vesuvius ; but, 
having once worried through the wretched little 
spruces, mean counterfeits of trees, we could fling 
ourselves down from mossy step to step, measuring 
off the distance by successive leaps of a second 
each, and alighting, sound after each, on moss yield- 
ing as a cushion. 

On we hastened, retracing our footsteps of the 
morning across the avalanches of crumbled granite, 



106 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

through the bogs, along the brooks ; nndelayed by 
the beauty of sunny glade or shady dell, never 
stopping to botanize or to classify, we traversed 
zone after zone, and safely ran the gantlet of the 
possible bears on the last level. We found lowland 
Nature still the same ; Ayboljockameegus was flow- 
ing still ; so was Penobscot ; no pirate had made 
way with the birch ; we embarked and paddled to 
camp. 

The first thing, when we touched terra firma, 
was to look back regretfully toward the mountain. 
Regret changed to wrath, when we perceived its 
summit all clear and mistless, smiling warmly to 
the low summer's sun. The rascal evidently had 
only waited until we were out of sight in the woods 
to throw away his night-cap. 

One long rainy day had somewhat disgusted us 
with the old hemlock-covered camp in the glade of 
the yellow birch, and we were reasonably and not 
unreasonably morbid after our disappointment with 
Katahdin. We resolved to decamp. In the last 
hour of sunlight, floating pleasantly from lovely 
reach to reach, and view to view, we could choose 
a spot of bivouac where no home-scenery would re- 
call any sorry fact of the past. We loved this 
gentle gliding by the tender light of evening over 
the shadowy river, marking the rhythm of our mu- 
sical progress by touches of the paddle. We de- 
termined, too, that the balance of bodily forces 
should be preserved : legs had been well stretched 
over the bogs and boulders ; now for the arms. 



UP KATAHDIN. 107 

Never did our sylvan sojourn look so fair as when 
we quitted it, and seemed to see among the stream- 
ing sunbeams in the shadows the Hamadryads of 
the spot returned, and waving us adieux. We for- 
got how damp and leaks and puddles had forced 
themselves upon our intimacy there ; we remem- 
bered that we were gay, though wet, and there had 
known the perfection of Ayboljockameegus trout. 

As we drifted along the winding river, between 
the shimmering birches on either bank, Katahdin 
watched us well. Sometimes he would show the 
point of his violet gray peak over the woods, and 
sometimes, at a broad bend of the water, he re- 
vealed himself fully, and threw his great image 
down beside for our nearer view. We began to 
forgive him, to disbelieve in any personal spite of 
his, and to recall that he himself, seen thus, was 
far more precious than any mappy dulness we could 
have seen from his summit. One great upright 
pyramid like this was worth a continent of grovel- 
ling acres. 

Sunset came, and with it we landed at a point 
below a lake-like stretch of the river, where the 
charms of a neighbor and a distant view of the 
mountain combined. Cancut the Unwearied roofed 
with boughs an old frame for drying moose-hides, 
while Iglesias sketched, and I worshipped Katah- 
din. Has my reader heard enough of it, — a hil- 
lock only six thousand feet high ? We are soon to 
drift away, and owe it here as kindly a farewell as 
it gave us in that radiant twilight by the river. 



108 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

From our point of view we raked the long stern 
front tending westward. Just before sunset, from 
beneath a belt oT clouds evanescing over the sum- 
mit, an inconceivably tender, brilliant glow of rosy 
violet mantled downward, filling all the valley. 
Then the violet purpled richer and richer, and 
darkened slowly to solemn blue, that blended with 
the gloom of the pines and shadowy channelled 
gorges down the steep. The peak was still in 
sunlight, and suddenly, half-way down, a band 
of roseate clouds, twining and changing like a 
choir of Bacchantes, soared around the western 
edge and hung poised above the unillumined for- 
ests at the mountain-base ; light as air they came 
and went and faded away, ghostly, after their 
work of momentary beauty was done. One slight 
maple, prematurely ripened to crimson and herald- 
ing the pomp of autumn, repeated the bright cloud- 
color amid the vivid verdure of a little island, and 
its image wavering in the water sent the flame 
floating nearly to our feet. 

Such are the transcendent moments of Nature, 
unseen and disbelieved by the untaught. The po- 
etic soul lays hold of every such tender pageant 
of beauty and keeps it forever. Iglesias, having 
an additional method of preservation, did not fail 
to pencil rapidly the wondrous scene. When he 
had finished his dashing sketch of this glory, so 
transitory, he peppered the whole with cabalistic 
cipher, which only he could interpret into beauty. 

Cancut's camp-fire now began to overpower the 



UP KATAHDIN, 109 

faint glimmers of twilight. The single-minded 
Cancut, little distracted by emotions, had heaped 
together logs enough to heat any mansion for a 
winter. The warmth was welcome, and the great 
flame, with its bright looks of familiar comradery, 
and its talk like the complex murmur of a throng, 
made a fourth in our party by no means terrible, as 
some other incorporeal visitors might have been. 
Fire was not only a talker, but an important actor : 
Fire cooked for us our evening chocolate ; Fire 
held the candlestick, while we, without much cere- 
mony of undressing, disposed ourselves upon our 
spruce-twig couch ; and Fire watched over our 
slumbers, crouching now as if some stealthy step 
were approaching, now lifting up its head and 
peering across the river into some recess where the 
water gleamed and rustled under dark shadows, 
and now sending far and wide over the stream and 
the clearing and into every cleft of the forest a 
penetrating illumination, a blaze of light, death to 
all treacherous ambush. So Fire watched while 
we slept, and when safety came with the earliest 
gray of morning, it, too, covered itself with ashes 
and slept. 



110 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

HOMEWARD. 

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful is dawn in the 
woods. Sweet the first opalescent stir, as if the 
vanguard sunbeams shivered as they dashed along 
the chilly reaches of night. And the growth of 
day, through violet and rose and all its golden 
glow of promise, is tender and tenderly strong, as 
the deepening passions of dawning love. Presently 
up comes the sun very peremptory, and says to 
people, " Go about your business I Laggards not 
allowed in Maine ! Nothing here to repent of, while 
you lie in bed and curse to-day because it cannot 
shake off the burden of yesterday ; all clear the 
past here ; all serene the future : into it at once ! '^ 

Birch was ready for us. Objects we travel on, 
if horses, often stampede or are stampeded ; if 
wagons, they break down ; if shanks, they stiffen ; 
if feet, they chafe. No such trouble befalls Birch ; 
leak, however, it will, as ours did this morning. 
We gently beguiled it into the position taken tear- 
fully by unwhipped little boys, when they are 
abotit to receive birch. Then, with a firebrand, the 
pitch of the seams was easily persuaded to melt 
and spread a little over the leaky spot, and Birch 
was sound as a drum. 

Staunch and sound Birch needed to be, for pres- 
ently Penobscot, always a skittish young racer, be- 



HOMEWARD. Ill 

gan to grow lively after he had shaken off the 
weighty shadow of Katahdin, and, kicking up his 
heels, went galloping down hill, so furiously that 
we were at last, after sundry frantic plunges, com- 
pelled to get off his back before worse befell us. 
In the balmy morning we made our first portage 
through a wood of spruces. How light our firkin 
was growing ! its pork, its hard-tack, and its con- 
diments were diffused among us three, and had 
passed into muscle. Lake Degetus, as pretty a 
pocket lake as there is, followed the carry. Next 
came Lake Ambajeejus, larger, but hardly less love- 
ly. Those who dislike long names may use its 
shorter Indian title, Umdo. We climbed a granite 
crag draped with moss long as the beard of a 
Druid, — a crag on the south side of Ambajeejus, or 
Umdo. Thence we saw Katahdin, noble as ever, 
unclouded in the sunny morning, near, and yet en- 
chantingly vague, with the blue sky which sur- 
rounded it. It was still an isolate pyramid rising 
with no effect from the fair blue lakes and the fair 
green sea of the birch-forest, — a brilliant sea of 
woods, gay as the shallows of ocean shot through 
with sunbeams and sunlight reflected upward from 
golden sands. 

We sped along all that exquisite day, best of all 
our poetic voyage. Sometimes we drifted and 
basked in sunshine, sometimes we lingered in the 
birchen shade ; we paddled from river to lake, from 
lake to river again ; the rapids whirled us along, 
surging and leaping under us with magnificent gal- 



112 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

lop ; frequent carries struck in, that we might not 
lose the forester in the waterman. It was a fresh 
world that we traversed on our beautiful river- 
path, — new as if no other had ever parted its over- 
hanging bowers. 

At noon we floated out upon Lake Pemadum- 
cook, the largest bulge of the Penobscot, and irreg- 
ular as the verb To Be. Lumbermen name it 
Bammydumcook : Iglesias insisted upon this as the 
proper reading ; and as he was the responsible 
man of the party, I accepted it. Woods, woody 
hills, and woody mountains surround Bammydum- 
cook. I have no doubt parts of it are pretty, 
and will be famous in good time ; but we saw lit- 
tle. By the time we were fairly out in the lake and 
away from the sheltering shore, a black squall to 
windward, hiding all the West, warned us to fly, 
for birches swamp in squalls. We deemed that 
Birch, having brought us through handsomely, de- 
served a better fate : swamped it must not be. We 
plied paddle valiantly, and were almost safe behind 
an arm of the shore when the storm overtook us, 
and in a moment more, safe, with a canoe only half- 
full of Bammydumcook water. 

It is easy to speak in scoffing tone ; but when 
that great roaring blackness sprang upon us, and 
the waves, showing their white teeth, snarled 
around, we were far from being in the mood to 
scofi". It is impossible to say too much of the 
charm of this gentle scenery, mingled with the 
charm of this adventurous sailing. And then there 



HOMEWARD. 113 

were no mosquitoes, no alligators, no serpents 
nncomfortabl}^ hugging the trees, no miasmas lurk- 
ing near ; and blueberries always. Dust there was 
none, nor the things that make dust. But Iglesias 
and I were breathing AIR, — Air sweet, tender, 
strong, and pure as an ennobling love. It was a 
day very happy, for Iglesias and I were near what 
we both love almost best of all the dearly-beloveds. 
It is such influence as this that rescues the thought 
and the hand of an artist from enervating manner- 
ism. He cannot be satisfied with vague blotches 
of paint to convey impressions so distinct and vivid 
as those he is forced to take direct from a Nature 
like this. He must be true and powerful. 

The storm rolled by and gave us a noble view of 
Katahdin, beyond a broad, beautiful scope of water, 
and rising seemingly directly from it. We fled be- 
fore another squall, over another breadth of Bam- 
mj'-dumcook, and made a portage around a great 
dam below the lake. The world should know that 
at this dam the reddest, spiciest, biggest, thickest 
wintergreen-berries in the world are to be found, 
beautiful as they are good. 

Birch had hitherto conducted himself with per- 
fect propriety. I, the novice, had acquired such 
entire confidence in his stability of character that I 
treated him with careless ease, and never listened 
to the warnings of my comrades that he would 
serve me a trick. Cancut navigated Birch through 
some white water below the dam, and Birch went 
curveting proudly and gracefully along, evidently 



IH LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

feeling his oats. When Iglesias and I came to em- 
bark, I, the novice, perhaps a little intoxicated 
with wintergreen-berries, stepped jauntily into the 
laden boat. Birch, alas I failed me. He tilted ; he 
turned ; he took in Penobscot, — took it in by the 
quart, by the gallon, by the barrel ; he would have 
sunk without mercy, had not Iglesias and Cancut 
succeeded in laying hold of a rock and restoring 
equilibrium. I could not have believed it of Birch, 
I was disappointed, and in consternation ; and if I 
had not known how entirely it was Birch's fault 
that everybody was ducked and everybody now 
had a wet blanket, I should have felt personallj'- 
foolish. I punished myself for another's fault and 
my own inexperience by assuming the wet blankets 
as my share at the next carry. I suppose few of 
my readers imagine how many pounds of water a 
blanket can absorb. 

After camps at Katahdin any residence in the 
woods without a stupendous mountain before the 
door would have been tame. It must have been 
this, and not any wearying of sylvan life, that 
made us hasten to reach the outermost log-house 
at the Millinoket carry before nightfall. The sen- 
sation of house and in-door life would be a new 
one, and so satisfying in itself that we should not 
demand beautiful objects to meet our first blink of 
awakening eyes. 

An hour before sunset, Cancut steered us toward 
a beach, and pointed out a vista in the woods, evi- 
dently artificial, evidently a road trodden by feet 



OUT OF THE WOODS. 115 

and hoofs, and ruled by parallel wheels. A road is 
one of the kindliest gifts of brother man to man : if 
a path in the wilderness, it comes forward like a 
-friendly guide offering experience and proposing a 
comrade dash deeper into the unknown world ; if 
a highway, it is the great, bold, sweeping character 
with which civilization writes its autograph upon a 
continent. Leaving our plunder on the beach, be- 
yond the reach of plunderers, whose great domain 
we were about to enter, we walked on toward the 
first house, compelled at parting to believe, that, 
though we did not love barbarism less, we loved 
civilization more. In the morning, Cancut should, 
with an ox-cart, bring Birch and our traps over 
the three miles of the carry. 



CHAPTER XV. 

OUT OF THE WOODS. 

What could society do without women and chil- 
dren ? Both we found at the first house, twenty 
miles from the second. The children buzzed about 
us ; the mother milked for us one of Maine's van- 
guard cows. She baked for us bread, fresh bread, 
— such "bread! not staff of life, — life's vaulting- 
pole. She gave us blueberries with cream of cream. 
Ah, what a change ! We sat on chairs, at a table. 



116 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

and ate from plates. There was a table-cloth, a 
salt-cellar made of glass, of glass never seen at 
camps near Katahdin. There was a sugar-bowl, a 
milk-jug, and other paraphernalia of civilization, in- 
cluding — memories of Joseph Bourgogne I — a 
dome of baked beans, with a crag of pork project- 
ing from the apex. We partook decorously, with 
controlled elbows, endeavoring *to appear as if we 
were accustomed to sit at tables and manage plates. 
The men, women, and children of Millinoket were 
hospitable and delighted to see strangers, and the 
men, like all American men in the summer before a 
Presidential election, wanted to talk politics. Ka- 
tahdin' s last full-bodied appearance was here ; it 
rises beyond a breadth of black forest, a bulkier 
mass, but not so symmetrical as from the southern 
points of view. We slept that night on a feather- 
bed, and took cold for want of air, beneath a 
roof. 

By the time we had breakfasted, Cancut arrived 
with Birch on an ox-sledge. Here our well-be- 
loved west branch of the Penobscot, called of yore 
Norimbagua, is married to the east branch, and of 
course by marriage loses his identity, by and by, 
changing from the wild, free, reckless rover of the 
forest to a tamish family-man style of river, usefid 
to float rafts and turn mills. However, during the 
first moments of the honeymoon, the happy pair, 
Mr. Penobscot and Miss Milly Noket, now a unit 
under the marital name, are gay enough, and glide 
along bowery reaches and in among fair islands, 



OUT OF THE WOODS. 117 

with infinite endearments and smiles, making the 
world very sparkling and musical there. By and 
by they fall to romping, and, to avoid one of their 
turbulent frolics, Cancut landed us, as he sup- 
posed, on the mainland, to lighten the canoe. Just 
as he was sliding away down-stream, we discovered 
that he had left us upon an island in the midst of 
frantic, impassable rapids. '' Stop, stop, John Gil- 
pin ! ^' and luckily he did stop, otherwise he would 
have gone on to tide-water, ever thinking that we 
were before him, while we, with our forest appe- 
tites, would have been glaring hungrily at each 
other, or perhaps drawing lots for a cannibal doom. 
Once again, as we were shooting a long rapid, a 
table-top rock caught us in mid-current. We were 
wrecked. It was critical. The waves swayed us 
perilously this way and that. Birch would be full 
of water, or overturned, in a moment. Small 
chance for a swimmer in such maelstroms I All 
this we saw, but had no time to shudder at. Aided 
by the urgent stream, we carefully and delicately 

— for a coarse movement would have been death 

— wormed our boat off the rock, and went fleeting 
through a labyrinth of new perils, onward, with a 
wild exhilaration, like galloping through prairie on 
fire. Of all the high distinctive national pleasures 
of America, chasing buffalo, stump-speaking, and 
the like, there is none so intense as shooting rap- 
ids in a birch. Whenever I recall our career down 
the Penobscot; a longing comes over me to re- 
peat it. 



118 LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR. 

We dropped down stream without further ad- 
ventures. We passed the second house, the first 
village, and other villages, very white and wide- 
awake, melodiously named Nickertow, Pattagum- 
pus, and Mattascunk. We spent the first night at 
Mattawamkeag. We were again elbowed at a tav- 
ern table, and compelled to struggle with real and 
not ideal pioneers for fried beefsteak and soggy 
doughboys. The last river day was tame, but not 
tiresome. We paddled stoutly by relays, stopping 
only once, at the neatest of farm-houses, to lunch 
on the most airy-substantial bread and baked apples 
and cream. It is surprising how confidential a 
traveller always is on the subject of his gastro- 
nomic delights. He will have the world know how 
he enjoyed his dinner, perhaps hoping that the 
world by sympathy will enjoy its own. 

Late in the afternoon of our eighth day from 
Greenville, Moosehead Lake, we reached the end- 
of birch-navigation, the great mill-dams of Indian 
Oldtown, near Bangor. Acres of great pine logs, 
marked three crosses and a dash, were floating here 
at the boom ; we saw what Maine men supposed 
timber was made for. According to the view act- 
ed upon at Oldtown, Senaglecouna has been for a 
century or centuries training up its lordly pines, 
that gang-saws, worked by Penobscot, should 
shriek through their helpless cylinders, gnashing 
them into boards and chewing them into saw- 
dust. 

Poor Birch ! how out of its element it looked, 



OUT OF THE WOODS. 119 

hoisted on a freight-car and travelling by rail to 
Bangor ! There we said adieu to Birch and Cancut. 
Peace and plenteous provender be with him ! Jour- 
neys make friends or foes ; and we remember our 
fat guide, not as one who from time to time just 
did not drown us, but as the jolly comrade of eight 
days crowded with novelty and beauty, and fine, 
vigorous, manly life. 



LOYE AND SKATES 



LOVE AND SKATES 



CHAPTER I. 

A KNOT AND A MAN TO CUT IT. 

Consternation ! Consternation in the back office 
of Benjamin Brummage, Esq., banker in Wall 
Street. 

Yesterday down came Mr. Superintendent 
Whiffler, from Dunderbunk, up the North River, 
to sa}^ that, " unless something be done, at once, 
the Dunderbunk Foundry and Iron-Works must 
wind up.'' President Brummage forthwith con- 
voked his Directors. And here they sat around 
the green table, forlorn as the guests at a Barme- 
cide feast. 

Well they might be forlorn ! It was the rosy 
summer solstice, the longest and fairest day of all 
the year. But rose-color and sunshine had fled 
from Wall Street. Noisy Crisis towing black 
Panic, as a puffing steam-tug drags a three-decker 
cocked and primed for destruction, had suddenly 
sailed in upon Credit. 

As all the green inch-worms vanish on the tenth 
of every Jun»e, so on the tenth of that June all the 



124 LOVE AND SKATES. 

money in America had buried itself and was as if 
it were not. Everybody and everything was ready 
to fail. If the hindmost brick went, down would 
go the whole file. 

There were ten Directors of the Dunderbunk 
Foundry. 

Now, not seldom, of a Board of ten Directors, 
five are wise and five are foolish : five wise, who 
bag all the Company's funds in salaries and 
commissions for indorsing its paper ; five foolish, 
who get no salaries, no commissions, no dividends, 
— nothing, indeed, but abuse from the stock- 
holders, and the reputation of thieves. That is to 
say, five of the ten are pickpockets ; the other five, 
pockets to be picked. 

It happened that the Dunderbunk Directors 
were all honest and foolish but one. He, John 
Churm, honest and wise, was off at the West, with 
his Herculean shoulders at the wheels of a dead- 
locked railroad. These honest fellows did not 
wish Dunderbunk to fail for several reasons. First, 
it was not pleasant to lose their investment. Sec- 
ond, one important failure might betray Credit to 
Crisis with Panic at its heels, whereupon every in- 
vestment would be in danger. Third, what would 
become of their Directorial reputations ? From 
President Brummage down, each of these gentle- 
men was one of the pockets to be picked in a great 
many companies. Each was of the first Wall- 
Street fashion, invited to lend his name and take 
stock in every new enterprise. Any one of them 



A KNOT Ai^D A MAN TO CUT IT. 125 

might have walked down town in a long patch- 
work toga made of the newspaper advertisements 
of boards in which his name proudly iSgured. If 
Dunderbunk failed, the toga was torn, and might 
presently go to rags beyond repair. The first rent 
would inaugurate universal rupture. How to 
avoid this disaster ? — that was the question. 

" State the case, Mr. Superintendent Whiffler,^' 
said President Brummage, in his pompous manner, 
with its pomp a little collapsed, pro tempore. 

Inefficient Whiffler whimpered out his story. 

The confessions of an impotent executive are 
sorry stuff to read. Whiffler's long, dismal com- 
plaint shall not be repeated. He had taken a pros- 
perous concern, had carried on things in his own 
way, and now failure was inevitable. He had 
bought raw material lavishly, and worked it badly 
into half-ripe material, which nobody wanted to 
buy. He was in arrears to his hands. He had tried 
to bully them, when they asked for their money. 
They had insulted him, and threatened to knock 
off work, unless they were paid at once. " A set 
of horrid ruffians,^' Whiffler said, — " and his life 
would n't be safe many days among them.'' 

^' Withdraw, if you please, Mr. Superintendent," 
President Brummage requested. " The Board will 
discuss measures of relief." 

The more they discussed, the more consternation. 
Nobody said anything to the purpose, except Mr. 
Sam Gwelp, his late father's lubberly son and suc- 
cessor. 



126 LOVE AND SKATES. 

'' Blast ! " said he ; "we shall have to let it 
slide I '' 

Into this assembly of imbeciles unexpectedly en- 
tered Mr. John Churm. He had set his Western 
railroad trains rolling, and was just returned to 
town. Now he was ready to put those Herculean 
shoulders at any other bemired and rickety no-go- 
cart. 

Mr. Churm was not accustomed to be a Director 
in feeble companies. He came into Dunderbunk 
recently as executor of his friend Damer, a year 
ago bored to death by a silly wife. 

Churm's bristly aspect and incisive manner made 
him a sharp contrast to Brummage. The latter 
personage was flabby in flesh, and the oppressively 
civil counter-jumper style of his youth had grown 
naturally into a deportment of most imposing pom- 
posity. . 

The Tenth Director listened to the President's 
recitative of their difficulties, chorused by the 
Board. 

*' Gentlemen,^' said Director Churm, " you want 
two things. The first is Money I " 

He pronounced this cabalistic word with such 
magic power, that all the air seemed instantly filled 
with a cheerful flight of gold American eagles, each 
carrying a double eagle on its back and a silver 
dollar in its claws ; and all the soil of America 
seemed to sprout with coin, as after a shower a 
meadow sprouts with the yellow buds of the dan- 
delion. 



A KNOT AND A MAN TO CUT IT. 127 

*' Mone}^ ! yes, Money ! " murmured the Direc- 
tors. 

It seemed a word of good omen, now. 

" The second thing," resumed the new-comer, 
'' is a Man ! " 

The Directors looked at each other and did not 
see such a being. 

" The actual Superintendent of Dunderbunk is 
a dunderhead," said Churm. 

"Pun!" cried Sam Gwelp, waking up from a 
snooze. 

Several of the Directors, thus instructed, started 
a complimentary laugh. 

*' Order, gentlemen I Orrderr ! " said the Presi- 
dent, severely, rapping with a paper-cutter. 

" We must have a Man, not a Whiffler ! " 
Churm continued. " And I have one in my eye." 

Everybody examined his eye. 

" Would you be so good as to name him ? " said 
Old Brummage, timidly. 

He wanted to see a Man, but feared the strange 
creature might be dangerous. 

'' Richard Wade," says Churm. 

They did not know him. The name sounded 
forcible. 

*' He has been in California," the nominator 
said. 

A shudder ran around the green table. They 
seemed to see a frowzy desperado, shaggy as a 
bison, in a red shirt and jackboots, hung about the 
waist with an assortment of six-shooters and bowie- 



128 LOVE AND SKATES. 

knives, and standing against a background of 
mustangs, monte-banks, and lynch-law. 

" We must get Wade," Churm says, with au- 
thority. ''He knows Iron by heart. He can 
handle Men. I will back him with my blank 
check, to any amount, to his order.'' 

Here a murmur of applause, swelling to a cheer, 
burst from the Directors. 

Everybody knew that the Geological Bank 
deemed Churm's deposits the fundamental stratum 
of its wealth. They lay there in the vaults, like 
underlying granite. When hot times came, they 
boiled up in a mountain to buttress the world. 

Churm's blank check seemed to wave in the air 
like an oriflamme of victory. Its payee might 
come from Botany Bay ; he might wear his beard 
to his knees, and his belt stuck full of howitzers 
and boomerangs ; he might have been repeatedly 
hung by Vigilance Committees, and as often cut 
down and revived by galvanism ; but brandishing 
that check, good for anything less than a million, 
every Director in Wall Street was his slave, his 
friend, and his brother. 

"Let us vote Mr. Wade in by acclamation," 
cried the Directors. 

''But, gentlemen," Churm interposed, "if I give 
him my blank check, he must have carte blanche, 
and no one to interfere in his management." 

Every Director, from President Brummage down, 
drew a long face at this condition. 

It was one of their great privileges to potter in 



A KNOT AND A MAN TO CUT IT. 129 

the Dunderbunk affairs and propose ludicrous im- 
possibilities. 

"Just as you please/' Churm continued. "I 
name a competent man, a gentleman and fine fel- 
low. I back him with all the cash he wants. But 
he must have his own way. Now take him, or 
leave him I '' 

Such despotic talk had never been heard before 
in that Directors' Room. They relucted a moment. 
But they thought of their togas of advertisements 
in danger. The blank check shook its blandish- 
ments before their eyes. 

'' We take him," they said, and Richard Wade 
was the new Superintendent unanimously. 

'' He shall be at Dunderbunk to take hold to- 
morrow morning," said Churm, and went off to 
notify him. 

Upon this. Consternation sailed out of the hearts 
of B rummage and associates. 

They lunched with good appetites over the 
green table, and the President confidently re- 
marked, — 

'' I don't believe there is going to be much of a 
crisis, after all." 



6* 



130 LOVE AND SKATES. 

CHAPTER II. 

BARRACKS FOR THE HERO. 

Wade packed his kit, and . took the Hudson 
River train for Dunderbunk the same afternoon. 

He swallowed his dust, he gasped for his fresh 
air, he wept over his cinders, he refused his " loz- 
engers," he was admired by all the pretty girls 
and detested by all the puny men in the train, and 
in good time got down at his station. 

He stopped on the platform to survey the land- 
and water-privileges of his new abode. 

" The June sunshine is unequalled/' he solilo- 
quized, '*the river is splendid, the hills are pretty, 
and the Highlands, north, respectable ; but the vil- 
lage has gone to seed. Place and people look lazy, 
vicious, and ashamed. I suppose those chimneys 
are my Foundry. The smoke rises as if the fur- 
naces were ill-fed and weak in the lungs. Nothing, 
I can see, looks alive, except that queer little 
steamboat coming in, — the ' I. Ambuster,' — jolly 
name for a boat I '^ 

Wade left his traps at the station, and walked 
through the village. All the gilding of a golden 
sunset of June could not make it anything but 
commonplace. It would be forlorn on a gray day, 
and utterly dismal in a storm. 

'' I must look up a civilized house to lodge in,'' 
thought the stranger. " I cannot possibly camp at 



BARRACKS FOR THE HERO. 131 

the tavern. Its offence is rum, and smells to 
heaven/^ 

Presently our explorer found a neat, white, two- 
story, home-like abode on the upper street, over- 
looking the river. 

'' This promises,'^ he thought. '' Here are roses 
on the porch, a piano, or at least a melodeon, by 
the parlor-window, and they are insured in the 
Mutual, as the Mutual's plate announces. Now, 
if that nice-looking person in black I see setting 
a table in the back-room is a widow, I will camp 
here.^' 

Perry Purtett was the name on the door, and op- 
posite the sign of an omnium-gatheruTn country- 
store hinted that Perry was deceased. The hint 
was a broad one. Wade read, *' Ringdove, Suc- 
cessor to late P. Purtett.'' 

" It 's worth a try to get in here out of the pa- 
gan barbarism around. I '11 propose — as a lodger 
- — to the widow." 

So said Wade, and rang the bell under the roses. 
A pretty, slim, delicate, fair-haired maiden an- 
swered. 

" This explains the roses and the melodeon,'' 
thought Wade, and asked, ' " Can I see your 
mother ? " 

Mamma came. " Mild, timid, accustomed to 
depend on the late Perry, and wants a friend,'' 
Wade analyzed, while he bowed. He proposed 
himself as a lodger. 

"I did n't know it was talked of generally," 



132 LOVE AND SKATES. 

replied the widow, plaintively ; " but I have said 
that we felt lonesome, Mr. Purtett bein' gone, and 
if the new minister — " 

Here she paused. The cut of Wade's jib was 
unclerical. He did not stoop, like a new minister. 
He was not pallid, meagre, and clad in unwhole 
some black, like the same. His bronzed face was 
frank and bold and unfamiliar with speculations on 
Original Sin or Total Depravity. 

^' I am not the new minister,'' said Wade, smiling 
slightly over his moustache ; " but a new Super- 
intendent for the Foundry." 

" Mr. Whifder is goin' ? " exclaimed Mrs. Purtett. 

She looked at her daughter, w^ho gave a little 
sob and ran out of the room. 

" What makes my daughter Belle feel bad," says 
the widow, "is, that she had a friend, — well, it 
is n't too much to say that they was as good as 
engaged, — and he was foreman of the Foundry 
finishin'-shop. But somehow Whiffler spoilt him, 
just as he spoils everything he touches ; and last 
winter, when Belle was away, William Tarbox — 
that 's his name, and his head is runnin' over with 
inventions — took to spreein' and liquor, and got 
ashamed of himself, and let down from a foreman 
to a hand, and is all the while lettin' down lower." 

The widow's heart thus opened. Wade walked 
in as consoler. This also opened the lodgings to 
him. He was presently installed in the large and 
small front-rooms up-stairs, unpacking his traps, 
and making himself permanently at home. 



HOW TO. BEHEAD A HYDRA! 133 

Superintendent Whiffler came over, by and by, 
to see his successor. He did not like his looks. 
The new man should have looked mean or weak or 
rascally, to suit the outgoer. 

"How long do you expect to stay?'' asks 
Whiffler, with a half-sneer, watching Wade hang- 
ing a map and a print vis-a-vis. 

" Until the men and I, or the Company and I, 
cannot pull together.'' 

" I '11 give you a week to quarrel with both, and 
another to see the whole concern go to everlasting 
smash. And now, if you 're ready, I '11 go over 
the accounts with you and prove it." 

Whiffler himself, insolent, cowardly, and a hum- 
bug, if not a swindler, was enough. Wade thought, 
to account for any failure. But he did not mention 
this conviction. 



CHAPTER III. 

HOW TO BEHEAD A HYDRA! 

At ten next morning, Whiffler handed over the 
safe-key to Wade, and departed to ruin some other 
property, if he could get one to ruin. Wade 
walked with him to the gate. 

" I 'm glad to be out of a sinking ship," said 
the ex-boss. " The Works will go down, sure as 
shooting. And I think myself well out of the 



134 LOVE AND SKATES. 

clutches of these men. They 're a bullying, 
swearing, drinking set of infernal ruffians. Fore- 
men are just as bad as hands. I never felt safe of 
my life with 'em.'^ 

" A bad lot, are they ? '' mused Wade, as he 
returned to the office. " I must give them a little 
sharp talk by way of Inaugural.'' 

He had the bell tapped and the men called to- 
gether in the main building. 

Much work was still going on in an inefficient, 
unsystematic way. 

While hot fires were roaring in the great fur- 
naces, smoke rose from the dusty beds where 
Titanic castings were cooling. Great cranes, man- 
acled with heavy chains, stood over the furnace- 
doors, ready to lift steaming jorums of melted 
metal, and pour out, hot and hot, for the moulds to 
swallow. 

Raw material in big heaps lay about, waiting 
for the fire to ripen it. Here was a stack of long, 
rough, rusty pigs, clumsy as the shillelahs of the 
Anakim. There was a pile of short, thick masses, 
lying higgledy-piggledy, stuff from the neighboring 
mines, which needed to be crossed with foreign 
stock before it could be of much use in civilization. 

Here, too, was raw material organized : a fly- 
wheel, large enough to keep the knobbiest of 
asteroids revolving without a wabble ; a cross- 
head, cross-tail, and piston-rod, to help a great sea- 
going steamer breast the waves ; a light walking- 
beam, to whirl the paddles of a fast boat on the 



HOW TO BEHEAD A HYDRA! 135 

river ; and other members of machines, only ask- 
ing to be put together and vivified by steam and 
they v^ould go at their work with a will. 

From the black rafters overhead hung the heavy 
folds of a dim atmosphere, half dust, half smoke. 
A dozen sunbeams, forcing their way through the 
grimy panes of the grimy upper windows, found 
this compound quite palpable and solid, and they 
moulded out of it a series of golden bars set side 
by side aloft, like the pipes of an organ out of its 
perpendicular. 

Wade grew indignant, as he looked about him 
and saw so much good stuff and good force wast- 
ing for want of a little will and skill, to train the 
force and manage the stuff. He abhorred bank- 
ruptcy and chaos. 

'' All they want here is a head,^^ he thought. 

He shook his own. The brain within was well 
developed with healthy exercise. It filled its case, 
and did not rattle like a withered kernel, or sound 
soft like a rotten one. It was a vigorous, muscular 
brain. The owner felt that he could trust it for an 
effort, as he could his lungs for a shout, his legs for 
a leap, or his fist for a knock-down argument. 

At the tap of the bell, the "bad lot^' of men 
came together. They numbered more than two 
hundred, though the Foundry was working short. 
They had been notified that ''that gonoph of a 
Whiffler was kicked out, and a new feller was in, 
who looked cranky enough, and wanted to see 'em 
and tell 'em whether he was a damn' fool or 
not." 



136 LOVE AND SKATES. 

So all hands collected from the different parts of 
the Foundry to see the head. 

They came up with easy and somewhat swag- 
gering bearing, — a good many roughs, with here 
and there a ruffian. Several, as they approached, 
swung and tossed, for mere overplus of strength, 
the sledges with which they had been tapping 
at the bald shiny pates of their anvils. Several 
wielded their long pokers like lances. 

Grimy chaps, all with their faces streaked, like 
Blackfeet in their war-paint. Their hairy chests 
showed, where some men parade elaborate shirt- 
bosoms. Some had their sleeves pushed up to the 
elbow to exhibit their compact flexors and exten- 
sors. Some had rolled their flannel up to the 
shoulder, above the bulging muscles of the upper 
arm. They wore aprons tied about the neck, like 
the bibs of our childhood, — or about the waist, 
like the coquettish articles which young house- 
wives affect. But there was no coquetry in these 
great flaps of leather or canvas, and they were 
besmeared and rust-stained quite beyond any bib 
that ever suffered under bread-and-molasses or mud- 
pie treatment. 

They lounged and swaggered up, and stood at 
ease, not without rough grace, in a sinuous line, 
coiled and knotted like a snake. 

Ten feet back stood the new Hercules who was 
to take down that Hydra's two hundred crests of 
insubordination . ■ 

They inspected him, and he them as coolly. He 



HOW TO BEHEAD A HYDRA! 137 

read and ticketed each man, as he came up, — • 
good, bad, or on the fence, — and marked each so 
that he would know him among a myriad. 

The Hands faced the Head. It was a question 
whether the two hundred or the one would be 
master in Dunderbunk. 

Which was boss ? An old question. It has to 
be settled whenever a new man claims power, and 
there is always a struggle until it is fought out by 
main force of brain or muscle. 

Wade had made up his mind on this subject. He 
waited a moment until the men were still. He was 
a Saxon six-footer of thirty. He stood easily on 
his pins, as if he had eyed men and facts before. 
His mouth looked firm, his brow freighted, his nose 
clipper, — that the hands could see. But clipper 
noses are not always backed by a stout hull. 
Seemingly freighted brows sometimes carry nothing 
but ballast and dunnage. The firmness may be all 
in the moustache, while the mouth hides beneath, 
a mere silly slit. All which the hands knew. 

Wade began, short and sharp as a trip-hammer, 
when it has a bar to shape. 

^' I 'm the new Superintendent. Richard Wade 
is my name. I rang the bell because I wanted to 
see you and have you see me. You know as well 
as I do that these Works are in a bad way. They 
canH stay so. They must come up and pay you 
regular wages and the Company profits. Every 
man of you has got to be here on the spot when the 
bell strikes, and up to the mark in his work. You 



138 LOVE AND SKATES. ^^ 

have n't been, — and you know it. You 've turned 
out rotten iron, — stuff that any honest shop would 
be ashamed of. Now there's to be a new leaf 
turned over here. You 're to be paid on the nail ; 
but you 've got to earn your money. I won't have 
any idlers or shirkers or rebels about me. I shall 
work hard myself, and every man of you will, or 
he leaves the shop. Now, if anybody has a com- 
plaint to make, I '11 hear him before you all." 

The men were evidently impressed with Wade's 
Inaugural. It meant something. But they were 
not to be put down so easily, after long misrule. 
There began to be a whisper, — 

'' B'il in, Bill Tarbox I and talk up to him ! " 

Presently Bill shouldered forward and faced the 
new ruler. 

Since Bill took to drink and degradation, he 
had been the but-end of riot and revolt at the 
Foundry. He had had his own way with Whiffler. 
He did not like to abdicate and give in to this new 
chap without testing him. 

In a better mood. Bill would have liked Wade's 
looks and words ; but to-day he had a sore head, 
a sour face, and a bitter heart, from last night's 
spree. And then he had heard — it was as well 
known already in Dunderbunk as if the town-crier 
had cried it — that Wade was lodging at Mrs. 
Purtett's, where poor Bill was excluded. • So Bill 
stepped forward as spokesman of the ruffianly ele- 
ment, and the immoral force gathered behind and 
backed him heavily. 



HOW TO BEHEAD A HYDRA! 139 

Tarbox, too, was a Saxon six-footer of thirty. 
But he had sagged one inch for want of self-re- 
spect. He had spoilt his color and dyed his mous- 
tache. He wore foxy-black pantaloons tucked into 
red-topped boots, with the name of the maker on 
a gilt shield. His red-flannel shirt was open at 
the neck and caught with a black handkerchief. 
His damaged tile was in permanent crape for the 
late lamented Poole. 

" We allow, '^ says Bill, in a tone half-way be- 
tween Lablache's De profundis and a burglar's 
bull-dog's snarl, " that we Ve did our work as 
good as need to be did. We 'xpect we know our 
rights. We ha'n't ben treated fair, and I'm 
damned if we 're go'n' to stan' it." 

" Stop ! " says Wade. ^' No swearing in this 
shop ! " ^^. 

^' Who the Devil is go'n' to stop it ? " growled 
Tarbox. 

'' I am. Do you step back now, and let some 
one come out who can talk like a gentleman ! " 

''I'm damned if I stir till I've had my say 
out," says Bill, shaking himself up and looking 
dangerous. 

''Go back!" 

Wade moved close to him, also looking dangerous. 

"Don't tech me!" Bill threatened, squar- 
ing off. 

He was not quick enough. Wade knocked him 
down flat on a heap of moulding-sand. The hat in 
mourning for Poole found its place in a puddle. 

Bill did not like the new Emperor's method of 



140 LOVE AND SKATES. 

compelling kotou. Round One of the mill had not 
given him enough. 

He jumped up from his soft bed and made a 
vicious rush at Wade. But he was damaged by- 
evil courses. He vt^as fighting against law and 
order, on the side of wrong and bad manners. 

The same fist met him again, and heavier. 

Up went his heels ! Down went his head ! It 
struck the ragged edge of a fresh casting, and 
there he lay stunned and bleeding on his hard 
black pillow. 

" Ring the bell to go to work ! '^ said Wade, in 
a tone that made the ringer jump. "Now, men, 
take hold and do your duty and everything will go 
smooth ! '^ 

The bell clanged in. The line looked at its pros- 
trate champion, then at the new boss standing 
there, cool and brave, and not afraid of a regiment 
of sledge-hammers. 

They wanted an Executive. They wanted to be 
well governed, as all men do. They wanted dis- 
order out and order in. The new man looked like 
a man, talked fair, hit hard. Why not all hands 
give in with a good grace and go to work like 
honest fellows ? 

The line broke up. The hands went off to their 
duty. And there was never any more insubordina- 
tion at Dunderbunk. 

This was June. 

Skates in the next chapter. 

Love in good time afterward shall glide upon 
the scene. 



A CHRISTMAS GIFT. 141 

CHAPTER lY. 

A CHRISTMAS GIFT. 

The pioneer sunbeam of next Christmas morning 
rattled over the Dunderbunk hills, flashed into 
Richard Wade's eyes, waked him, and was off, 
ricochetting across the black ice of the river. 

Wade jumped up, electrified and jubilant. He 
had gone to bed feeling quite too despondent for 
so healthy a fellow. Christmas Eve, the time of 
family meetings, reminded him how lonely he was. 
He had not a relative in the world, except two 
little nieces, — one as tall as his knee, the other 
almost up to his waist ; and them he had safely 
bestowed in a nook of New England, to gain wit 
and virtues as they gained inches. 

*' I have had a stern and lonely life," thought 
Wade, as he blew out his candle last night, " and 
what has it profited me ? " 

Perhaps the pioneer sunbeam answered this ques- 
tion with a truism, not always as applicable as in 
this case, — ''A brave, able, self-respecting man- 
hood is fair profit for any man's first thirty years 
of life." 

But, answered or not, the question troubled 
Wade no more. He shot out of bed in tip-top 
spirits ; shouted " Merry Christmas ! " at the rising 
disk of the sun ; looked over the black ice ; thrilled 
with the thought of a long holiday for skating ; 



142 LOVE AND SKATES. 

and proceeded to dress in a knowing suit of rough 
clothes, singing, " Ah, non giunge! " as he slid into 
them. 

Presently, glancing from his south window, he 
observed several matinal smokes rising from the 
chimneys of a country-house a mile away, on a 
slope fronting the river. 

" Peter Skerrett must be back from Europe at 
last," he thought. " I hope he is as fine a fellow 
as he was ten years ago. I hope marriage has not 
made him a muff, and wealth a weakling.'' 

Wade went down to breakfast with an heroic ap- 
petite. His " Merry Christmas '' to Mrs. Purtett 
was followed ap by a ravished kiss and the gift of 
a silver butter-knife. The good widow did not 
know which to be most charmed with. The butter- 
knife was genuine, shining, solid silver, with her 
initials, M. B. P., Martha Bilsby Purtett, given in 
luxuriant flourishes ; but then the kiss had such a 
fine twang, such an exhilarating titillation ! The 
late Perry's kisses, from first to last, had wanted 
point. They were, as the Spanish proverb would 
put it, unsavory as unsalted eggs, for want of a 
moustache. The widow now perceived, with mild 
regret, how much she had missed when she married 
'' a man all shaven and shorn." Her cheek, still 
fair, though forty, flushed with novel delight, and 
she appreciated her lodger more than ever. 

Wade's salutation to Belle Purtett was more dis- 
tant. There must be a little friendly reserve be- 
tween a handsome young man and a pretty young 



A CHRISTMAS GIFT. 143 

r 

woman several grades lower in the social scale, liv- 
ing in the same house. They were on the most 
cordial terms, however ; and her gift — of course 
embroidered slippers — and his to her — of course 
"The Illustrated Poets/' in Turkey morocco — 
were exchanged with tender good-will on both 
sides. 

" We shall meet on the ice, Miss Belle/' said 
Wade. '* It is a day of a thousand for skating." 

''Mr. Ringdove says you are a famous skater/' 
Belle rejoined. "He saw you on the river yester- 
day evening." 

" Yes ; Tarbox and I were practising to exhibit 
to-day ; but I could not do much with my dull old 
skates." 

Wade breakfasted deliberately, as a holiday 
morning allowed, and then walked down to the 
Foundry. There would be no work done to-day, 
except by a small gang keeping up the fires. The 
Superintendent wished only to give his First Semi- 
Annual Report an hour's polishing, before he joined 
all Dunderbunk on the ice. 

It was a halcyon day, worthy of its motto, 
" Peace on earth, good-will to men." The air was 
electric, the sun overflowing with jolly shine, the 
river smooth and sheeny from the hither bank to 
the snowy mountains opposite. 

" I wish I were Rembrandt, to paint this grand 
shadowy interior," thought Wade, as he entered 
the silent, deserted Foundry. " With the gleam 
of the snow in my eyes, it looks deliciously warm 



144 LOVE AND SKATES. 

and chiaroscuro. When the men are here and 'fer- 
vet opus/ — the pot boils, — I cannot stop to see 
the picturesque.'' 

He opened his office, took his Report and began 
to complete it with ,s, ;s, and .s in the right 
places. 

All at once the bell of the Works rang out loud 
and clear. Presently the Superintendent became 
aware of a tramp and a bustle in the building. 
By and by came a tap at the office-door. 

'' Come in," said Wade, and, enter young Perry 
Purtett. 

Perry was a boy of fifteen, with hair the color of 
fresh sawdust, white eyebrows, and an uncommonly 
wide-awake look. Ringdove, his father's succes- 
sor, could never teach Perry the smirk, the grace, 
and the seductiveness of the counter, so the boy 
had found his place in the finishing-shop of the 
Foundry. 

" Some of the hands would like to see you for 
half a jifi*, Mr. Wade," said he. "Will you come 
along, if you please ? " 

There was a good deal of easy swagger about 
Perry, as there is always in boys and men whose 
business is to watch the lunging of steam-engines. 
Wade followed him. Perry led the way with a 
jaunty air that said, — 

" Room here ! Out of the way, you lubberly 
bits of cast-iron ! Be careful, now, you big der- 
ricks, or I '11 walk right over you ! Room now for 
Me and My suite ! " 



A CHRISTMAS GIFT. 145 

This pompous usher conducted the Superintend- 
ent to the very spot in the main room of the Works 
where, six months before, the Inaugural had been 
pronounced and the first Veto spoken and enacted. 

And there, as six months before, stood the Hands 
awaiting their Head. But the aprons, the red 
shirts, and the grime of working-days were off, and 
the whole were in holiday rig, — as black and 
smooth and shiny from top to toe as the members 
of a Congress of Undertakers. 

Wade, following in the wake of Perry, took his 
stand facing the rank, and waited to see what he 
was summoned for. He had not long to wait. 

To the front stepped Mr. William Tarbox, fore- 
man of the finishing-shop, no longer a bhoy, but an 
erect, fine-looking fellow, with no nitrate in his 
moustache, and his hat permanently out of mourn- 
ing for the late Mr. Poole. 

"■ Gentlemen, ^^ said Bill, " I move that this meet- 
ing organize by appointing Mr. Smith Wheelwright 
Chairman. As many as are in favor of this motion, 
please to say, ' Ay.' '' 

*' Ay 1 '^ said the crowd, very loud and big. 
And then every man looked at his neighbor, a little 
abashed, as if he himself had made all the noise. 

" This is a free country,'' continues Bill. "Ev- 
ery woter has a right to a fair shake. Contrary 
minds, ' No.' " 

No contrary minds. The crowd uttered a great 
silence. Every man looked at his neighbor, sur- 
prised to find how well they agreed. 

7 J 



146 LOVE AND SKATES. 

" Unanimous ! " Tarbox pronounced. *' No frac- 
tious minorities here, to block the wheels of legis- 
lation ! '' 

The crowd burst into a roar at this significant 
remark, and, again abashed, dropped portcullis on 
its laughter, cutting off the flanks and tail of the 
sound. 

" Mr. Purtett, will you please conduct the Chair- 
man to the Chair," says Bill, very stately. 

"Make way here I '^ cried Perry, with the man- 
ner of a man seven feet high. " Step out now, Mr. 
Chairman ! '' 

He took a . big, grizzled, docile-looking fellow 
patronizingly by the arm, led him forward, and 
chaired him on a large cylinder-head, in the rough, 
just hatched out of its mould. 

" Bang away with that, and sing out ' Silence ! ' " 
says the knowing boy, handing Wheelwright an 
iron bolt, and taking his place beside him, as 
prompter. 

The docile Chairman obeyed. At his breaking 
silence by hooting " Silence 1 " the audience had 
another mighty bob tailed laugh. 

" Say, ' Will some honorable member state the 
object of this meeting?' '' whispered the prompter. 

" Will some honorable mumbler state the subject 
of this 'ere meetin' ? '' says Chair, a little bashful 
and confused. 

Bill Tarbox advanced, and, with a formal bow, 
began, — 

''Mr. Chairman — '' 



A CHRISTMAS GIFT. 147 

'' Say, ' Mr. Tarbox has the floor/ " piped Perry. 

"Mr, Tarbox has the floor," diapasoned the 
Chair. 

''Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen — " Bill began, 
and stopped. 

" Say, ' Proceed, Sir ! ^ '^ suggested Perry, which 
the senior did, magnifying the boy's whisper a 
dozen times. 

Again Bill began and stopped. 

" Boys,'' said he, dropping grandiloquence, 
" when I accepted the ofiice of Orator of the 
Day at our primary, and promised to bring for- 
ward our Resolutions in Iwnor of Mr. Wade with 
my best speech, I did n't think I was going to 
have such a head of steam on that the waives 
would get stuck and the piston jammed and I 
could n't say a word. 

"But," he continued, warming up, "when I 
think of the Indian powwow we had in this very 
spot six months ago, — and what a mean bloat I 
was, going to the stub-tail dogs with my hat over 
my eyes, — and what a hard lot we were all round, 
livin' on nothing but argee whiskey, and rampin' 
ofi" on benders, instead of makin' good iron, — and 
how the Works was flat broke, — and how Dunder- 
bunk was full of women crying over their husbands 
and mothers ashamed of their sons, — boys, when 
I think how things was, and see how they are, and 
look at Mr. Wade stvanding there like a — " 

Bill hesitated for a comparison. 

"Like a thousand of brick," Perry Purtett sug- 
gested, sotto voce. 



148 LOVE AND SKATES. 

The Chairman took this as a hint to himself. 

*' Like a thousand of brick/ ^ he said, with the 
voice of a Stentor. 

Here the audience roared and cheered, and the 
Orator got a fresh start. 

" When you came, Mr. Wade," he resumed, 
*' we was about sick of putty -heads and sneaks 
that did n't know enough or did n't dare to make 
us stand round and bone in. You walked in, b'ilin' 
over with grit. You took hold as if you belonged 
here. You made things jump like a two-headed 
tarrier. All we wanted was a live man, to say, 
' Here, boys, all together now ! You 've got your 
stint, and I 've got mine. I 'm boss in this shop, 
— but I can't do the first thing, unless every man 
pulls his pound. Now, then, my hand is on the 
throttle, grease the wheels, oil the waives, poke 
the fires, hook on, and let 's yank her through with 
a will ! ' " 

At this figure the meeting showed a tendency to 
cheer. " Silence ! " Perr}^ sternly suggested. *' Si- 
lence ! " repeated the Chair. 

"Then," continued the Orator, "you wasn't 
one of the uneasy kind, always fussin' and cussin' 
round. You was n't always spyin' to see we 
did n't take home a cross-tail or a hundred-weight 
of cast-iron in our pants' pockets, or go to swig- 
gin' hot metal out of the ladles on the sly." 

Here an enormous laugh requited Bill's joke. 
Perry prompted, the Chair banged with his bolt 
and cried, " Order ! " 



A CIIEISTMAS GIFT. 149 

" Well, now, boys,'' Tarbox went on, '' what has 
come of having one of the right sort to be boss ? 
Why, this. The Works go ahead, stiddy as the 
North River. We work full time and full-handed. 
We turn out stuff that no shop needs to be ashamed 
of. Wages is on the nail. We have a good time 
generally. How is that, boys, — Mr. Chairman 
and Gentlemen ? '' 

*' That 's so ! " from everybody. 

'' And there 's something better yet," Bill re- 
sumed. "Dunderbunk used to be full of crying 
women. They 've stopped crying now." 

Here the whole assemblage. Chairman and all, 
burst into an irrepressible cheer. 

" But I 'm making my speech as long as a light- 
ning-rod," said the speaker. '' I '11 put on the 
brakes, short. I guess Mr. Wade understands 
pretty well, now, how we feel ; and if he don't, 
here it all is in shape, in this document, with 
' Whereas ' at the top and ' Resolved ' entered 
along down in five places. Mr. Purtett, will you 
hand the Resolutions to the Superintendent ? " 

Perry advanced and did his office loftily, much 
to the amusement of Wade and the workmen. 

" Now," Bill resumed, " we wanted, besides, to 
make you a little gift, Mr. Wade, to remember the 
day by. So we got up a subscription, and every 
man put in his dime. Here 's the present, — hand 
'em over, Perry ! 

" There, Sir, is The; Best Pair of Skates to be 
had in York City, made for work, and no nonsense 



150 LOVE AXD SKATES. 

about 'em. We Dunderbunk boys give 'em to 
you, one for all, and hope you '11 like 'em and beat 
the world skating, as you do in all the things 
we 've knowed you try. 

"Now, boys," Bill perorated, "before I retire 
to the shades of private life, I motion we give 
Three Cheers — regular Tdplifters — for Kichard 
Wade ! " 

" Hurrah I Wade and Good .Government!'' 
" Hurrah I Wade and Prosperity I " " Hurrah I 
Wade and the Women's Tears Dry I " 

Cheers like the shout of Achilles I Wielding 
sledges is good for the bellows, it appears. Top- 
lifters ! Why, the smoky black rafters overhead 
had to tug hard to hold the roof on. Hurrah ! 
From every corner of the vast building came back 
rattling echoes. The Works, the machinery, the 
furnaces, the stuff, all had their voice to add to the 
verdict. 

Magnificent music ! and our Anglo-Saxon is the 
only race in the world civilize(f enough to join in 
singing it. We are the only hurrahing peoj^le, — 
the only brood hatched in a " Hurrah's nest." 

Silence restored, the Chairman, prompted by 
Perry, said, " Gentlemen, Mr. Wade has the floor 
for a few remarks." 

Of course Wade had to speak, and did. He 
would not have been an American in America 
else. But his heart was too full to say more than 
a few hearty and earnest words of good feeling. 

" Now, men," he closed, " I want to get away 



SKATING AS A FINE ART. 151 

on the river and see if my skates will go as they 
look ; so I '11 end by proposing three cheers for 
Smith Wheelwright, our Chairman, three for our 
Orator, Tarbox, three for Old Dunderbunk, — 
Works, Men, Women, and Children ; and one big 
cheer for Old Father Iron, as rousing a cheer as 
ever was roared/' 

So they gave their three times three with enor- 
mous enthusiasm. The roof shook, the furnaces 
rattled. Perry Purtett banged with the Chairman's 
hammer, the great echoes thundered through the 
Foundry. 

And when they ended with one gigantic cheer 
for IRON, tough and true, the weapon, the tool, 
and the engine of all civilization, — it seemed as 
if the uproar would never cease until Father Iron 
himself heard the call in his sniithy away under 
the magnetic pole, and came clanking up, to re- 
turn thanks in person. 



CHAPTER V. 

SKATING AS A FINE ART. 

Of all the plays that are played by this playful 
world on its play-days, there is no play like Skat- 
ing. 

To prepare a board for the moves of this game 



152 LOVE AND SKATES. 

of games, a panel for the drawings of this Fine 
Art, a stage for the entrechats and pirouettes of its 
graceful adepts, Zero, magical artificer, had been, 
for the last two nights; sliding at full speed up 
and down the North River. 

We have heard of Midas, whose touch made 
gold, and of the virgin under whose feet sprang 
roses ; but Zero's heels and toes were armed with 
more precious influences. They left a diamond 
way, where they slid, — a hundred and fifty miles 
of diamond, half a mile wide and six inches thick. 

Diamond can only reflect sunlight ; ice can con- 
tain it. Zero's product, finer even than diamond, 
was filled — at the rate of a million to the square 
foot — with bubbles immeasurably little, and yet 
every one big enough to comprise the entire sun 
in small, but without alteration or abridgment. 
When the sun rose, each of these wonderful cells 
was ready to catch the tip of a sunbeam and house 
it in a shining abode. 

Besides this. Zero had inlaid its work, all along 
shore, with exquisite marquetry of leaves, brown 
and evergreen, of sprays and twigs, reeds and 
grasses. No parquet in any palace from Fontaine- 
bleau to St. Petersburg could show such delicate 
patterns, or could gleam so brightly, though pol- 
ished with all the wax in Christendom. 

On this fine pavement, all the way from Cohoes 
to Spuyten Duyvil, Jubilee was sliding without 
friction, the Christmas morning of these adven- 
tures. 



SKATING AS A FINE ART. 153 

Navigation was closed. Navigators had leisure. 
The sloops and 'schooners were frozen in along 
shore, the tugs and barges were laid up in basins, 
the floating palaces were down at New York, de- 
odorizing their bar-rooms, regilding their bridal 
chambers, and enlarging their spittoon accommo- 
dations alow and aloft, for next summer. All the 
population was out on the ice, skating, sliding, 
sledding, slipping, tumbling, to its heart's con- 
tent. 

One person out of ever^ Dunderbunk family was 
of course at home, roasting Christmas turkey. 
The rest were already at high jinks on Zero's 
Christmas present, when Wade and the men came 
down from the meeting. 

Wade buckled on his new skates in a jiffy. He 
stamped to settle himself, and then flung ofi' half a 
dozen circles on the right leg, half a dozen with 
the left, and the same with either leg backwards. 

The ice, traced with these white peripheries, 
showed like a blackboard where a school has been 
chalking diagrams of Euclid, to point at with the 
"slow unyielding finger'' of . demonstration. 

" Hurrah ! " cries Wade, halting in front of the 
men, who, some on the Foundr}^ wharf, some on 
the deck of our first acquaintance at Dunderbunk, 
the tug *' I. Ambuster," were putting on their 
skates or watching him. " Hurrah ! the skates 
are perfection ! Are you ready. Bill ? " 

" Yes," says Tarbox, whizzing ofi:' rings, as exact 
as Giotto's autograph. 



154 LOVE AND SKATES. 

" Now, then," Wade said, " we '11 give Dunder- 
bunk a laugh, as we practised last night.'' 

They got under full headway. Wade backwards, 
Bill forwards, holding hands. When they were 
near enough to the merry throng out in the stream, 
both dropped into a sitting posture, with the left 
knee bent, and each with his right leg stretched 
out parallel to the ice and fitting compactly by the 
other man's leg. In this queer figure they rushed 
through the laughing crowd. 

Then all Dunderbunk formed a ring, agog for a 
grand show of 

Skating as a Fine Art. 

The world loves to see Great Artists, and expects 
them to do their duty. 

It is hard to treat of this Fine Art by the Art of 
Fine Writing. Its eloquent motions must be seen. 

To skate Fine Art, you must have a Body and a 
Soul, each of the First Order ; otherwise you will 
never get out of coarse art and skating in one syl- 
lable. So much for yourself, the motive power. 
And your machinery, — your smooth-bottomed rock- 
ers, the same shape stem and stern, — this must be 
as perfect as the man it moves, and who moves it. 

Now suppose you wish to skate so that the critics 
will say, "Seel this athlete does his work as 
Church paints, as Barley draws, as Palmer chisels, 
as Whittier strikes the lyre, and Longfellow the 
dulcimer ; he is as terse as Emerson, as clever as 
Holmes, as graceful as Curtis ; he is as calm as 



« 



SKATING AS A FINE ART. 155 



Seward, as keen as Phillips, as stalwart as Beecher ; 
he is Garibaldi, he is Kit Carson, he is Blondin ; he 
is as complete as the steamboat Metropolis, as 
Steers's yacht, as Singer's sewing-machine, as Colt's 
revolver, as the steam-plough, as Civilization.'' 
You wish to be so ranked among the people and 
things that lead the age ; — consider the qualities 
you must have, and while you consider, keep your 
eye on Eichard Wade, for he has them all in perfec- 
tion. 

First, — of your physical qualities. You must 
have lungs, not bellows ; and an active heart, not 
an assortment of sluggish auricles and ventricles. 
You must have legs, not shanks. Their shape is 
unimportant, except that they must not interfere at 
the knee. You must have muscles, not flabbiness ; 
sinews like wire ; nerves like sunbeams ; and a thin 
layer of flesh to cushion the gable-ends, where you 
will strike, if you tumble, — which, once for all be it 
said, you must never do. You must be all momen- 
tum, and no inertia. You must be one part grace, 
one force, one agility, and the rest caoutchouc, Ma- 
nilla hemp, and watch-spring. Your machine, your 
body, must be thoroughly obedient. It must go 
just so far and no farther. You have got to be as 
unerring as a planet holding its own, emphatically, 
between forces centripetal and centrifugal. Your 
aplomb must be as absolute as the pounce of a 
falcon. 

So much for a few of the physical qualities neces- 
sary to be a Great Artist in Skating. See Wade, 
how he shows them ! 



156 LOVE AND SKATES. 

Now for the moral and intellectual. Pluck is the 
first ; — it always is the first quality. Then enthu- 
siasm. Then patience. Then pertinacity. Then 
a fine aesthetic faculty, — in short, good taste. 
Then an orderly and submissive mind, that can con- 
sent to act in accordance with the laws of Art. 
Circumstances, too, must have been reasonably fa- 
vorable. That well-known sceptic, the King of 
tropical Bantam, could not skate, because he had 
never seen ice and doubted even the existence of 
solid water. Widdrington, after the Battle of 
Chevy Chace, could not have skated, because he 
had no legs, — poor fellow I 

But granted the ice and the legs, then if you be- 
gin in the elastic days of youth, when cold does not 
sting, tumbles do not bruise, and duckings do not 
wet ; if you have pluck and ardor enough to try 
everything ; if you work slowly ahead and stick to 
it ; if you have good taste and a lively invention ; 
if you are a man, and not a lubber ; — then, in fine, 
you may become a Grreat Skater, just as with equal 
power and equal pains you may put your grip on 
any kind of Greatness. 

The technology of skating ig imperfect. Few of 
the great feats, the Big Things, have admitted 
names. If I attempted to catalogue Wade's 
achievements, this chapter might become an unin- 
telligible rhapsody. A sheet of paper and a pen- 
point cannot supply the place of a sheet of ice and 
a skate-edge. Geometry must have its diagrams. 
Anatomy its corpus to carve. Skating also refuses 



i 



SKATING AS A FINE ART. 157 

to be spiritualized into a Science ; it remains an 
Art, and cannot be expressed in a formula. 

Skating has its Little Go, its Great Go, its Bac- 
calaureate, its M. A., its F. S. D. (Doctor of Fran- 
tic Skipping), its A. G. D. (Doctor of Airy Glid- 
ing), its N. T. D. (Doctor of No Tumbles), and 
finally its highest degree, U. P. (Unapproachable 
Podographer). 

Wade was U. P. 

There were a hundred of Dunderbunkers who 
had passed their Little Go and could skate forward 
and backward easily. A half-hundred, perhaps, 
were through the Great Go ; these could do outer 
edge freely. A dozen had taken the Baccalaureate, 
and were proudly repeating the pirouettes and 
spread-eagles of that degree. A few could cross 
their feet, on the edge, forward and backward, and 
shift edge on the same foot, and so were Magistri 
A7iis. 

Wade, U. P., added to these an indefinite list 
of combinations and fresh contrivances. He spun 
spirals slow, and spirals neck or nothing-. He piv- 
oted on one toe, with the other foot cutting rings, 
inner and outer edge, forward and back. He 
skated on one foot better than the M. A.s could on 
both. He ran on his toes ; he slid on his heels ; 
he cut up shines like a sunbeam on a bender ; he 
swung, light as if he could fly, if he pleased, like 
a wing-footed Mercury ; he glided as if will, not 
muscle, moved him ; he tore about in frenzies ; his 
pivotal leg stood firm, his balance leg flapped like 



158 LOVE AND SKATES. 

a graceful pinion ; he turned somersets ; he jumped, 
whirling backward as he went, over a platoon of 
boys laid flat on the ice ; — the last boy winced, 
and thought he was amputated ; but Wade flew 
over, and the boy still holds together as well as 
most boys. Besides this, he could write his name, 
with a flourish at the end, like the ruhrica of a 
Spanish hidalgo. He could pedograph any letter, 
and multitudes of ingenious curlicues which might 
pass for the alphabets of the unknown tongues. 
lie could not tumble. 

It was Fine Art. 

Bill Tarbox sometimes pressed the champion 
hard. But Bill stopped just short of Fine Art, in 
High Artisanship. 

How Dunderbunk cheered this wondrous dis- 
play ! How delighted the whole population was 
to believe the}^ possessed the best skater on the 
North River ! How they struggled to imitate ! 
How they tumbled, some on their backs, some on 
their faces, some with dignity like the dying 
Caesar, some rebelliously like a cat thrown out of 
a garret, some limp as an ancient acrobate ! How 
they laughed at themselves and at each other I 

"It's all in the new skates,'' says Wade, 
apologizing for his unapproachable power and 
finish. 

''It 's suthin' in the man," says Smith Wheel- 
wright. 

'' Now chase me, everybody," said Wade. 

And, for a quarter of an hour, he dodged the 



« 



SKATING AS A FINE ART. 159 

merry crowd, until at last, breathless, he let him- 
self be touched by pretty Belle Purtett, rosiest of 
all the Dunderbunk bevy of rosy maidens on the 
ice. 

" He rayther beats Besting,'' says Captain Isaac 
Ambuster to Smith Wheelwright. "It's so cold 
there that they can skate all the year round ; but 
.he beats them, all the same." 

The Captain was sitting in a queer little bowl of 
a skift* on the deck of his tug, and rocking it like 
a cradle, as he talked. 

" Besting 's always hard to beat in anything," 
rejoined the ex-Chairman. " But if Besting is to 
be beat, here 's the man to do it." 

And now, perhaps, gentle reader, you think I 
have said enough in behalf of a limited fraternity, 
the Skaters. 

The next chapter, then, shall take up the cause 
of the Lovers, a more numerous body, and we will 
see whether True Love, which never makes 
" smooth running," can help its progress by a 
skate-blade. 



160 LOVE AND SKATES. 

CHAPTER VI. 
" GO NOT, HAPPY DAY, TILL THE MAKJEN YIELDS." 

Christmas noon at Dunderbunk. Every skater 
was in galloping glee, — as the electric air, and 
the sparkling sun, and the glinting ice had a right 
to expect that they all should be. 

Belle Purtett, skating simply and well, had 
never looked so pretty and graceful. So thought 
Bill Tarbox. 

He had not spoken to her, nor she to him, for 
more than six months. The poor fellow was 
ashamed of himself and penitent for his past bad 
courses. And so, though he longed to have his 
old flame recognize him again, and though he was 
bitterly jealous and miserably afraid he should 
lose her, he had kept away and consumed his heart 
like a true despairing lover. 

But to-day Bill was a lion, only second to Wade, 
the unapproachable lion-in-chief. Bill was rein- 
stated in public esteem, and had won back his 
standing in the Foundry. He had to-day made a 
speech which Perry Purtett gave everybody to 
understand "none of Senator Bill Seward's could, 
hold the tallow to.'' Getting up the meeting and 
presenting Wade with the skates was Bill's own 
scheme, and it had turned out an eminent success. 
Everything began to look bright to him. His past 
life drifted out of his mind like the rowdy tales he 
used to read in the Sunday newspapers. 



GO NOT, HAPPY DAY, TILL THE MAIDEN YIELDS. 161 

He had watched Belle Purtett all the morning, 
and saw that she distinguished nobody with her 
smiles, not even that coq du village, Ringdove. 
He also observed that she was furtively watching 
him. 

By and by she sailed out of the crowd, and went 
off a little way to practise. 

''Now,'^ said he to himself, "sail in. Bill Tar- 
box ! '^ 

Belle heard the sharp strokes of a powerful 
skater coming after her. Her heart divined who 
this might be. She sped away like the swift Ca- 
milla, and her modest drapery showed just enough 
and " ne quid nimis ^' of her ankles. 

Bill admired the grace and the ankles immensely. 
But his hopes sank a little at the flight, — for he 
thought she perceived his chase and meant to drop 
him. Bill had not had a classical education, and 
knew nothing of Galatea in the Eclogue, — how 
she did not hide, until she saw her swain was look- 
ing fondly after. 

" She wants to get away,^^ he thought, " But 
she sha'n't, — no, not if I have to follow her to 
Albany.'^ 

He struck out mightily. Presently the swift 
Camilla let herself be overtaken. 

" Good morning, Miss Purtett.'' (Dogged air.) 

"Good morning, Mr. Tarbox.'' (Taken-by-sur- 
prise air.) 

" I Ve been admiring your skating," says Bill, 
trying to be cool. 



162 LOVE A^D SKATES. 

" Have you ? ^' rejoins Belle, very cool and dis- 
tant. 

" Have you been long on the ice ? '' he inquired, 
hypocritically. 

'' I came on two hours ago with Mr. Ringdove 
and the girls, ^' returned she, with a twinkle which 
said, " Take that. Sir, for pretending you did not 
see me.'' 

" You Ve seen Mr. Wade skate, then,'' Bill said, 
ignoring Ringdove. 

''Yes; isn't it splendid?" Belle replied, kin- 
dling. 

'' Tip-top ! " 

'' But then he does everything better than any- 
body." 

"So he does I " Bill said, — true to his friend, 
and yet beginning to be jealous of this enthusiasm. 
It was not the first time he had been jealous of 
Wade ; but he had quelled his fears, like a good 
fellow. 

Belle perceived Bill's jealousy, and could have 
cried for joy. She had known as little of her once 
lover's heart as he of hers. She only knew that 
he stopped coming to see her when he fell, and had 
not renewed his visits now that he was risen again. 
If she had not been charmingly ruddy with the 
brisk air and exercise, she would have betrayed 
her pleasure at Bill's jealousy with a fine blush. 

The sense of recovered power made her wish to 
use it again. She must tease him a little. So she 
continued, as they skated on in good rhythm, — 



GO NOT, HAPPY DAY, TILL THE MAIDEN YIELDS. 1G3 

" Mother and I would n't know what to do with- 
out Mr. Wade. We like him so much/' — said 
ardently. 

What Bill feared was true, then, he thought. 
Wade, noble fellow, worthy to win any woman's 
heart, had fascinated his landlady's daughter. 

" I don't wonder you like him," said he. '' He 
deserves it." 

Belle was touched by her old lover's forlorn 
tone. 

" He does indeed," she said. '' He has helped 
and taught us all so much. He has taken such 
good care of Perry. And then" — here she gave 
her companion a little look and a little smile — 
" he speaks so kindly of you, Mr. Tarbox." 

Smile, look, and words electrified Bill. He gave 
such a spring on his skates that he shot far ahead 
of the lady. He brought himself back with a 
sharp turn. 

'* He has done kinder than he can speak," says 
Bill. " He has made a man of me again, Miss 
Belle." 

" I know it. It makes me very happy to hear 
you able to say so of yourself." She spoke gravely. 

'( Very happy " — about anything that concerned 
him ? Bill had to work off his over-joy at this by 
an exuberant flourish. He whisked about Belle, — 
outer edge backward. She stopped to admire. 
He finished by describing on the virgin ice, before 
her, the letters B. P., in his neatest style of po- 
dography, — easy letters to make, luckily. 



164 LOVE AND SKATES. 

*' Beautiful I '^ exclaimed Belle. '' What are those 
letters ? Oh ! B. P. ! What do they stand for ? '' 

'' Guess ! '^ 

" I ^m so dull/' said she, looking bright as a 
diamond. " Let me think I B. P. ? British 
Poets, perhaps." 

" Try nearer home ! '^ 

"What are you likely to be thinking of that 
begins with B. P. ? — 0, I know! Boiler Plates ! '' 

She looked at him, — innocent as a lamb. Bill 
looked at her, delighted with her little coquetry. 
A woman without coquetry is insipid as a rose 
without scent, as Champagne without bubbles, or 
as corned beef without mustard. 

''It's something I'm thinking of most of the 
time," says he; "but I hope it's softer than 
Boiler Plates. B. P. stands for Miss Isabella 
Purtett." 

" Oh I " says Belle, and she skated on in silence. 

" You came down with Alonzo Ringdove ? " 
Bill asked, suddenly, aware of another pang after 
a moment of peace. 

" He came with me and his sisters," she replied. 

Yes ; poor Ringdove had dressed himself in his 
shiniest black, put on his brightest patent-leather 
boots, with his new swan-necked skates newly 
strapped over them, and wore his new dove-colored 
overcoat with the long skirts, on purpose to be 
lovely in the eyes of Belle on this occasion. Alas, 
in vain ! " 

"■ Mr. Ringdove is a great friend of yours, is 
n't he ? " 



4 



h 



GO NOT, HAPPY DAY, TILL THE JIAIDEN YIELDS. 165 

'' If you ever came to see me now, you would 
know who my friends are, Mr, Tarbox.'^ 

'' Would you be my friend again, if I came, Miss 
Belle ? '' 

"Again? I have always been so, — always, 
Bill.'' 

" Well, then, something more than my friend, — 
now that I am trying to be worthy of more, 
Belle ? '' 

'' What more can I be ? '' she said, softly. 

"My wife/' 

She curved to the right. He followed. To the 
left. He was not to be shaken off. 

" Will you promise me not to say waives instead 
of values, Bill ? " she said, looking pretty and 
saucy as could be. " I know, to say W for V is 
fashionable in the iron business ; but I don't like 
it." 

" What a thing a woman is to dodge ! " says 
Bill. " Suppose I told you that men brought up 
inside of boilers, hammering on the inside against 
twenty hammering like Wulcans on the outside, 
get their ears so dumfounded that they can't tell 
whether they are saying valves or waives, wice or 
virtue, — suppose I told you that, — what would 
you say. Belle ? " 

"Perhaps I 'd say that you pronounce virtue so 
well, and act it so sincerely, that I can't make any 
objection to your other words. If you 'd asked me 
to be your vife, Bill, I might have said I did n't 
understand ; but wife I do .understand, and I 
say — " 



166 LOVE AND SKATES. 

She nodded, and tried to skate off. Bill stuck 
close to her side. 

" Is this true, Belle ? '^ he said, almost doubt- 
fully. 

'' True as truth ! '^ 

She put out her hand. He took it, and they 
skated on together, — hearts beating to the rhythm 
of their movements. The uproar and merriment 
of the village came only faintly to them. It 
seemed as if all Nature was hushed to listen to 
their plighted troth, their words of love renewed, 
more earnest for long suppression. The beautiful 
ice spread before them, like their life to come, a 
pathway untouched by any sorrowful or weary 
footstep. The blue sky was cloudless. The keen 
air stirred the pulses like the vapor of frozen 
wine. The benignant mountains westward kindly 
surveyed the happy pair, and the sun seemed cre- 
ated to warm and cheer them. 

*' And you forgive me, Belle ? ^' said the lover. 
'' I feel as if I had only gone bad to make me know 
how much better going right is.'' 

'' I always knew you would find it out. I never 
stopped hoping and praying for it.'' 

" That must have been what brought Mr. Wade 
here." 

" Oh, I did hate him so, Bill, when I heard of 
something that happened between you and him ! 
I thought him a brute and a tyrant. I never could 
get over it, until he told mother that you were the 
best machinist he ever knew, and would some time 
grow to be a great inventor." 



4 



GO NOT, HAPPY DAY, TILL THE MAIDEN Y^LDS. 167 

'' I 'm glad you hated him. I suffered rattle- 
snakes and collapsed flues for fear you 'd go and 
love him." 

" My affections were engaged/' she said with 
simple seriousness. 

" Oh, if I M only thought so long ago ! How 
lovely you are I '^ exclaims Bill, in an ecstasy. 
^' And how refined ! And how good I God bless 
you ! " 

He made up such a wishful mouth, — so wishful 
for one of the pleasurable duties of mouths, that 
Belle blushed, laughed, and looked down, and as 
she did so saw that one of her straps was trailing. 

" Please fix it, Bill," she said, stopping ^nd 
kneeling. , *.- 

Bill also knelt, and his wishfvMQO,lith immedi- 
ately took its chance. 

A manly smack and sweet little feminine chirp 
sounded as their lips met. 

Boom ! twanging gay as the first tap of a mar- 
riage-bell, a loud crack in the ice rang musically 
for leagues up and down the river. '' Bravo ! " it 
seemed to say. '^ Well done. Bill Tarbox I Try 
again ! " Which the happy fellow did, and the 
happy maiden permitted. 

''Now," said Bill, ''let us go and hug Mr. 
Wade ! " 

" What ! Both of us ? " Belle protested. " Mr. 
Tarbox, I am ashamed of you ! " 



168 ♦ LOVE AND SKATES. 



CHAPTER VII. 

WADE DOWN. 

The hugging of Wade by the happy pair had to 
be done metaphorically, since it was done in the 
sight of all Dunderbunk. 

He had divined a happy result, when he missed 
Bill Tarbox from the arena, and saw him a furlong 
away, hand in hand with his reconciled sweetheart. 

" I envy you, Bill,^' said he, '' almost too much 
to put proper fervor into my congratulations.'^ 

'' Your time will come,'' the foreman rejoined. 

And says Belle, " I am sure there is a lady skat- 
ing somewhere, and only waiting for you to follow 
her." 

*' I don't see her," Wade replied, looking with a 
mock-grave face up and down and athwart the 
river. " When you 've all gone to dinner, I '11 
prospect ten miles up and down, and try to find a 
good matrimonial claim that 's not taken," 

'* You will not come up to dinner ? " Belle asked. 

" I can hardly afford to make two bites of a holi- 
day," said Wade. *' I 've sent Perry up for a 
luncheon. Here he comes with it. So I cede 
my quarter of your pie. Miss Belle, to a better 
fellow." 

'' Oh ! " cries Perry, coming up and bowing elab- 
orately. " Mr. and Mrs. Tarbox, I believe. Ah, 
yes I Well, I will mention it up at Albany. I am 



WADE DOWN. 169 

going to take my Guards up to call on the Gov- 
ernor." 

Perry dashed off, followed by a score of Dunder- 
bunk boys, organized by him as the Purtett Guards, 
and taught to salute him as Generalissimo with mil- 
itary honors. 

So many hundreds of turkeys, done to a turn, 
now began to have an effect upon the atmosphere. 
Few odors are more subtile and pervading than 
this, and few more appetizing. Indeed, there is 
said to be an odd fellow, a strictly American gour- 
mand, in New York, who sits from noon to dusk 
on Christmas-Day up in a tall steeple, merely 
to catch the aroma of roast-turkey floating over 
the city, — and much good, it is said, it does 
him. 

Hard skating is nearly as effective to whet 
hunger as this gentleman's expedient. When the 
spicy breezes began to blow soft as those of Cey- 
lon's isle over the river and every whiff talked 
Turkey, the population of Dunderbunk listened to 
the wooing and began to follow its several noses — 
snubs, beaks, blunts, sharps, piquants, dominants, 
fines, bulgies, and bifids — on the way to the sev- 
eral households which those noses adorned or de- 
faced. Prosperous Dunderbunk had a Dinner, yes, 
a Dinner, that day, and Richard Wade was grate- 
fully remembered by many over-fed foundry-men 
and their over-fed families. 

Wade had not had half skating enough. 

" I '11 time myself down to Skerrett's Point,'' he 

8 



170 LOVE AND SKATES. 

thought, " and take my luncheon there among the 
hemlocks." 

The Point was on the property of Peter Skerrett, 
Wade's friend and college comrade of ten years 
gone. Peter had been an absentee in Europe, and 
smokes from his chimneys this morning had con- 
firmed to Wade's eyes the rumor of his return. 

Skerrett's Point was a mile below the Foundry. 
Our hero did his mile under three minutes. How 
many seconds under, I will not say. I do not wish 
to make other fellows unhappy. 

The Point was a favorite spot of Wade's. Many 
a twilight of last summer, tired with his fagging 
at the Works to make good the evil of Whiffler's 
rule, he had lain there on the rocks under the hem- 
locks, breathing the spicy methyl they poured into 
the air. After his day's hard fight, in the dust and 
heat of the Foundry, with anarchy and unthrift, he 
used to take the quiet restoratives of Nature, until 
the murmur and fragrance of the woods, the cool 
wind, and the soothing loiter of the shining stream 
had purged him from the fevers of his task. 

To this old haunt he skated, and kindling a little 
fire, as an old campaigner loves to do, he sat down 
and lunched heartily on Mrs. Purtett's cold leg, — 
cannibal thought ! — on the cold leg of Mrs. Pur- 
tett's yesterday's turkey. Then lighting his weed, 
— dear ally of the lonely, — the Superintendent 
began to think of his foreman's bliss, and to long 
for something similar on his own plane. 

" I hope the wish is father to its fulfilment/^ he 



WADE DOWN. 171 

said. " But I must not stop here and be spooney. 
Such a halcyon day I may not have again in all my 
life, and I ought to make the best of it, with my 
New Skates.^' 

So he dashed off, and filled the little cove above 
the Point with a labyrinth of curves and flourishes. 

When that bit of crystal tablet was well cov- 
ered, the podographer sighed for a new sheet to 
inscribe his intricate rubricas upon. Why not 
write more stanzas of the poetry of motion on the 
ice below the Point ? Why not ? 

Braced by his lunch on the brown fibre of good 
Mrs. Purtett's cold drumstick and thigh. Wade 
was now in fine trim. The air was more glittering 
and electric than ever. It was triumph and vic- 
tory and paean in action to go flashing along over 
this footing, smoother than polished marble and 
sheenier than first-water gems. 

Wade felt the high exhilaration of pure blood 
galloping through a body alive from top to toe. 
The rhythm of his movement was like music 
to him. 

The Point ended in a sharp promontory. Just 
before he came abreast of it,. Wade under mighty 
headway flung into his favorite corkscrew spiral on 
one foot, and went whirling dizzily along, round 
and round, in a straight line. 

At the dizziest moment, he was suddenly aware 
of a figure, also turning the Point at full speed, and 
rushing to a collision. 

He jerked aside to avoid it. lie could not look 



172 LOVE AND SKATES. 

to his footing. His skate struck a broken oar, im- 
bedded in the ice. He fell violently, and lay like a 
dead man. 

His New Skates, Testimonial of Merit, seem to 
have served him a shabby trick. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

tete-a-tI:te. 

. Seeing Wade lie there motionless, the lady — 

Took off her spectacles, blew her great red nose, 
and stiffly drew near. 

Spectacles I Nose I No, — the latter feature of 
hers had never become acquainted with the former ; 
and there was as little stiffness as nasal redness 
about her. 

A fresh start, then, — and this time accuracy I 
Appalled by the loud thump of the stranger's 
ekuU upon the chief river of the State of New 
York, the lady — it was a young lady whom Wade 
had tumbled to avoid — turned, saw a human being 
lying motionless, and swept gracefully toward him, 
like a Good Samaritan, on the outer edge. It was 
not her fault, but her destiny, that she had to be 
graceful even under these tragic circumstances. 
'' Dead I '' she thought. '' Is he dead ? '' 
The appalling thump had cracked the ice, and 



tete-a-t£te. 173 

she could not know how well the skull was cush- 
ioned inside with brains to resist a blow. 

She shuddered, as she swooped about toward 
this possible corpse. It might be that he was 
killed, and half the fault hers. No wonder her fine 
color, shining in the right parts of an admirably 
drawn face, all disappeared instantly. 

But she evidently was not frightened. She halt- 
ed, kneeled, looked curiously at the stranger, and 
then proceeded, in a perfectly cool and self-pos- 
sessed way, to pick him up. 

A solid fellow, heavy to lift in his present lump- 
ish condition of dead-weight ! She had to tug 
mightily to get him up into a sitting position. 
When he was raised, all the backbone seemed gone 
from his spine, and it took the whole force of her 
vigorous arms to sustain him. 

The eifort was enough to account for the return 
of her color. It came rushing back splendidly. 
Cheeks, forehead, everything but nose, blushed. 
The hard work of lifting so much avoirdupois, and 
possibly, also, the novelty of supporting so much 
handsome fellow, intensified all her hues. Her 
eyes — blue, or that shade even more faithful than 
blue — deepened ; and her pale golden hair grew 
several carats — not carrots — brighter. 

She was repaid for her active sympathy at once 
by discovering that this big, awkward thing was 
not a dead, but only a stunned body. It had an 
ugly bump and a bleeding cut on its manly skull, 
but otherwise was quite an agreeable object to 



174 LOVE AND SKATES. 

contemplate, and plainly on its " unembarrassed 
brow Nature had written ' Gentleman.' " 

As this young lady had never had a fair, steady 
stare at a stunned hero before, she seized her ad- 
vantage. She had hitherto been distant with the 
other sex. She had no brother. Not one of her 
male cousins had ever ventured near enough to 
get those cousinly privileges that timid cousins 
sigh for and plucky cousins take, if they are worth 
taking. 

Wade's impressive face, though for the moment 
blind as a statue's, also seized its advantage and 
stared at her intently, with a pained and pleading 
look, new to those resolute features. 

Wade was entirely unconscious of the great hit 
he had made by his tumble : plump into the arms 
of this heroine 1 There were fellows extant who 
would have suffered any imaginable amputation, 
any conceivable mauling, any fling from the apex 
of anything into the lowest deeps of anywhere, 
for the honor he was now enjoying. 

But all he knew was that his skull was a beehive 
in an uproar, and that one lobe of his brain was 
struggling to swarm off. His legs and arms felt as 
if they belonged to another man, and a very limp 
one at that. A ton of cast-iron seemed to be press- 
ing his eyelids down, and a trickle of red-hot metal 
flowed from his cut forehead. 

'' I shall have to scream," thought the lady, after 
an instant of anxious waiting, "if he does not re- 
vive. I cannot leave him to go for help." 



TETE-A-TETE. 175 

Not a prude, you see. A prude would have had 
cheap scruples about compromising herself by tak- 
ing a man in her arms. Not a vulgar person, who 
would have required the stranger to be properly 
recommended by somebody who came over in the 
Mayflower, before she helped him. Not a feeble- 
minded damsel, who, if she had not fainted, would 
have fled away, gasping and in tears. No timidity 
or prudery or underbred doubts about this thorough 
creature. She knew she was in her right womanly 
place, and she meant to stay there. 

But she began to need help, possibly a lancet, 
possibly a pocket-pistol, possibly hot blankets, pos- 
sibly somebod}^ to knead these lifeless lungs and 
pommel this flaccid body, until circulation was re- 
stored. 

Just as she was making up her mind to scream, 
Wade stirred. He began to tingle as if a famil- 
iar of the Inquisition were slapping him all over 
with fine-toothed currycombs. He became half 
conscious of a woman supporting him. In a stam- 
mering and intoxicated voice he murmured, — 

" Who ran to catch me when I fell, 
And kissed the place to make it well V 
My — " 

He opened his eyes. It was not his mother ; for 
she was long since deceased. Nor was this non- 
mother kissing the place. 

In fact, abashed at the blind eyes suddenly un- 
closing so near her, she was on the point of letting 
her burden drop. When dead men come to life in 



176 LOVE AND SKATES. 

such a position, and begin to talk about " kissing 
the place/' young ladies, however independent of 
conventions, may w^ell grow uneasy. 

But the stranger, though alive, was evidently in 
a molluscous, invertebrate condition. He could 
not sustain himself. She still held him up, a little 
more at arm's-length, and all at once the reaction 
from extreme anxiety brought a gush of tears to 
her eyes. 

" Don't cry," says Wade, vaguely, and still only 
half conscious. " I promise never to do so again." 

At this, said with a childlike earnestness, the lady 
smiled. 

*' Don't scalp me," Wade continued, in the same 
tone, " Squaws never scalp." 

He raised his hand to his bleeding forehead. 

She laughed outright at his queer plaintive tone 
and the new class he had placed her in. 

Her laugh and his own movement brought Wade 
fully to himself. She perceived that his look was 
transferring her from the order of scalping squaws 
to her proper place as a beautiful young woman of 
the highest civilization, not smeared with vermilion, 
but blushing celestial rosy. 

" Thank you," said Wade. " I can sit up now 
without assistance." And he regretted profoundly 
that good breeding obliged him to say so. 

She withdrew her arms. He rested on the ice, — 
posture of the Dying Gladiator. She made an ef- 
fort to be cool and distant as usual ; but it would 
not do. This weak mighty man still interested 



t£te-a-tete. Ill 

her. It was still her business to be strength to 
him. 

He made a feeble attempt to wipe away the drops 
of blood from his forehead with his handkerchief. 

" Let me be your surgeon ! '' said she. , 

She produced her own folded handkerchief, — 
M. D. were the initials in the corner, — and neatly 
and tenderly turbaned him. 

Wade submitted with delight to this treatment. 
A tumble with such trimmings was luxury indeed. 

" Who would not break his head," he thought, 
" to have these delicate fingers plying about him, 
and this pure, noble face so close to his ? What 
a queenly indifferent manner she has I What a 
calm brow I What honest eyes I What a firm 
nose ! What equable cheeks I What a grand in- 
dignant mouth I ■ Not a bit afraid of me ! She 
feels that I am a gentleman and will not presume.'' 

" There ! '' said she, drawing back. ^' Is that 
comfortable ? '' 

" Luxury ! '' he ejaculated with fervor. 

" I am afraid I am to blame for your terrible fall." 

"No, — my own clumsiness and that oar-blade 
are in fault.'' 

" If you feel well enough to be left alone, I will 
skate off and call my friends." 

" Please do not leave me quite yet ! " says 
Wade, entirely satisfied with the tete-a-tete. 

" Ah ! here comes Mr. Skerrett round the 
Point I " she said, — and sprang up, looking a little 
guilty. 

8* h 



178 LOVE AND SKATES. 



CHAPTER IX. 

LOVE IN THE FIRST DEGREE. 

Peter Skerrett came sailing round the purple 
rocks of his Point, skating like a man who has 
been in the South of Europe for two winters. 

He was decidedly Anglicized in his whiskers, 
coat, and shoes. Otherwise he in all respects re- 
peated his well-known ancestor, Skerrett of the 
Eevolution ; whose two portraits — 1. A ruddy 
hero in regimentals, in Gilbert Stuart's early 
brandy-and-water manner ; 2. A rosy sage in sen- 
atorials, in Stuart's later claret-and-water manner 
— hang in his descendant's dining-room. 

Peter's first look was a provokingly significant 
one at the confused and blushing young lady. Sec- 
ondly he inspected the Dying Gladiator on the ice. 

" Have you been tilting at this gentleman, 
Mary ? " he asked, in the voice of a cheerful, 
friendly fellow. " Why I Hullo. Hooray ! It 's 
Wade, Richard Wade, Dick Wade I Don't look. 
Miss Mary, while I give him the grips of all the 
secret societies we belonged to in College." 

Mary, however, did look on, pleased and amused, 
while Peter plumped down on the ice, shook his 
friend's hand, and examined him as if he were fine 
crockery, spilt and perhaps shattered. 

" It 's not a case of trepanning, Dick, my boy ? '' 
said he. 



LOVE IN THE FIKST DEGREE. 179 

" No/' said the other. *' I tumbled in trying to 
dodge this lady. The ice thought my face ought 
to be scratched, because I had been scratching its 
face without mercy. My wits were knocked out 
of me ; but they are tired of secession, and plead- 
ing to be let in again.'' 

''Keep some of them out for our sake I We 
must have you at our commonplace level. Well, 
Miss Mary, I suppose this is the first time you 
have had the sensation of breaking a man's head. 
You generally hit lower." Peter tapped his heart. 

" I 'm all right now, thanks to my surgeon," 
says Wade. " Give me a lift, Peter." He pulled 
up and clung to his friend. 

''You're the vine and I'm the lamp-post," 
Skerrett said. " Mary, do you know what a 
pocket-pistol is ? " 

" I have seen such weapons concealed about the 
persons of modern warriors." 

" There 's one in my overcoat-pocket, with a cup 
at the but and a cork at the muzzle. Skate off 
now, like an angel, and get it. Bring Fanny, too. 
She is restorative." 

" Are you alive enough to admire that, Dick ? " 
he continued, as she skimmed away. 

" It would put a soul under the ribs of Death." 

"I venerate that young woman," says Peter. 
" You see what a beauty she is, and just as un- 
spoiled as this ice. Unspoiled beauties are rarer 
than rocs' eggs." 

'* She has a singularly true face," Wade replied, 



180 LOVE AND SKATES. 

" and that is the main thing, — the most excellent 
thing in man or woman/' 

" Yes, truth makes that nuisance, beauty, toler- 
able." 

" You did not do me the honor to present me." 

" I saw you had gone a great waji beyond that, 
my boy. Have you not her initials in cambric on 
your brow ? Not M. T., which would n't apply ; 
but M. D." 

^'Mary ?" 

*' Damer." 

'^ I like the name," says Wade, repeating it. 
*' It sounds simple and thorough-bred." 
• " Just what she is. One of the nine simple- 
hearted and thorough-bred girls on this continent." 

''Nine?" 

''Is that too many? Three, then. That 's one 
in ten millions. The exact proportion of Poets, 
Painters, Orators, Statesmen, and all other Great 
Artists. Well, — three or nine, — Mary Damer is 
one of them. She never saw fear or jealousy, or 
knowingly allowed an ignoble thought or an un- 
gentle word or an ungraceful act in herself. Her 
atmosphere does not tolerate flirtation. You must 
find out for yourself how much genius she has and 
has not. But I will say this, — that I think of puns 
two a minute faster when I 'm with her. Therefore 
she must be magnetic, and that is the first charm 
in a woman." 

Wade laughed. "You have not lost your pow- 
ers of analysis, Peter. But talking of this hero- 



LOVE IN THE FIRST DEGREE. 181 

ine, you have not told me anything about yourself, 
except apropos of punning.'^ 

" Come up and dine, and we '11 fire away person- 
al histories, broadside for broadside I I Ve been 
looking in vain for a worthy hero to set vis-a-vis to 
my fair kinswoman. But stop I perhaps you have 
a Christmas turkey at home, with a wife opposite, 
and a brace of boys waiting for drumsticks. '^ 

" No, — my boys, like cherubs, await their own 
drumsticks. They 're not born, and I 'm not mar- 
ried.'' 

" I thought you looked incomplete and abnormal. 
Well, I will show you a model wife, — and here 
she comes ! " 

Here they came, the two ladies, gliding round 
the Point, with draperies floating as artlessly artful 
as the robes of Eaphael's Hours, or a Pompeian 
Bacchante. For want of classic vase or patera, Miss 
Damer brandished Peter Skerrett's pocket-pistol. 

Fanny Skerrett gave her hand cordially to Wade, 
and looked a little anxiously at his pale face. 

'' Now, M. D.," says Peter, " you have been 
surgeon, you shall be doctor and dose our patient. 

Now, then, — 

' Hebe, pour free ! 
Quicken his eyes with mountain-dew, 
That Styx, the detested, 
No more he may view.' " 
" Thanks, Hebe ! " 
Wade said, continuing the quotation, — 

"I quaff it! 
lo Paean, I cry ! 
The whiskey of the Immortals 
Forbids me to die." 



182 LOVE AND SKATES. 

" We effeminate women of the nineteenth cen- 
tury are afraid of broken heads/^ said Fanny. 
*' But Mary Darner seems quite to enjoy your acci- 
dent, Mr. Wade, as an adventure. ^^ 

Miss Darner certainly did seem gay and exhil- 
arated. 

'' I enjoy it,'' said Wade. " I perceive that I 
fell on my feet, when I fell on my crown. I tum- 
bled among old friends, and I hope, among new 
ones.'' 

"I have been waiting to claim my place among 
your old friends," Mrs. Skerrett said, " ever since 
Peter told me you were one of his models." 

She delivered this little speech with a caressing 
manner which totally fascinated Wade. 

Nothing was ever so absolutely pretty as Mrs. 
Peter Skerrett. Her complete prettiness left noth- 
ing to be desired. 

'^ Never," thought Wade, ''did I see such a 
compact little casket of perfections. Every feature 
is thoroughly well done and none intrusively supe- 
rior. Her little nose is a combination of all the 
amiabilities. Her black eyes sparkle with fun and 
mischief and wit, all playing over deep tenderness 
below. Her hair ripples itself full of gleams and 
shadows. The same coquetry of Nature that rip- 
pled her hair has dinted her cheeks with shifting 
dimples. Every time she smiles — and she smiles 
as if sixty an hour were not half-allowance — a 
dimple slides into view and vanishes like a dot in 
a flow of sunny water. And, Peter Skerrett I if 



LOVE IN THE FIRST DEGREE. 183 

you were not the best fellow in the world, I should 
envy you that latent kiss of a mouth. '^ 

"You need not say it, Wade, — your broken 
head exempts you from the business of compli- 
ments," said Peter ; '' but I see you think my wife 
perfection. You '11 think so the more, the more 
you know her.'' 

"Stop, Peter," said she, "or I shall have to 
hide behind the superior charms of Mary Damer." 

Miss Damer certainly was a woman of a grander 
order. You might pull at the bells or knock at 
the knockers and be introduced into the bou- 
doirs of all the houses, villas, seats, chateaus, 
and palaces in Christendom without seeing such 
another. She belonged distinctly to the Northern 
races, — the "brave and true and tender" wo- 
men. There was, indeed, a trace of hauteur 
and imperiousness in her look and manner ; but 
it did not ill become her distinguished figure 
and face. Wade, however, remembered her sweet 
earnestness when she was playing leech to his 
wound, and chose to take that mood as her dom- 
inant one. 

" She must have been desperately annoyed with 
bores and boobies," he thought. " I do not won- 
der she protects herself by distance. I am afraid 
I shall never get within her lines again, — not 
even if I should try slow and regular approaches, 
and bombard her with bouquets for a twelve- 
month." 

"But, Wade," says Peter, "all this time you 



184 LOVE AND SKATES. 

have not told us what good luck sends you here 
to be wrecked on the hospitable shores of my 
Point/^ 

'' I live here. I am chief cook and confectioner 
where you see the smoking top of that tall chimney 
up-stream.'' 

" Why, of course ! What a dolt I was, not to 
think of you, when Churm told us an Athlete, a 
Brave, a Sage, and a Gentleman was the Super- 
intendent of Dunderbunk ; but said we must find 
his name out for ourselves. You remember, Mary. 
Miss Damer is Mr. Churm 's ward/' 

She acknowledged with a cool bow that she did 
remember her guardian's character of Wade. 

" You do not say, Peter," says Mrs. Skerrett, 
with a bright little look at the other lady, " why 
Mr. Churm was so mysterious about Mr. Wade." 

" Miss Damer shall tell us," Peter rejoined, re- 
peating his wife's look of merry significance. 

She looked somewhat teased. Wade could di- 
vine easily the meaning of this little mischievous 
talk. His friend Churm had no doubt puffed him 
furiously. 

" All this time," said Miss Damer, evading a 
reply, "we are neglecting our skating privileges." 

" Peter and I have a few grains of humanity in 
our souls," Fanny said. " We should blush to 
sail away from Mr. Wade, while he carries the 
quarantine flag at his pale cheeks." 

" I am almost ruddy again," says Wade. " Your 
potion, Miss Damer, has completed the work of 






LOVE IN THE FIRST DEGREE. 185 

your surgery. I can afford to dismiss my lamp- 
post/' 

" Whereupon the post changes to a teetotum," 
Peter said, and spun off in an eccentric, ending in 
a tumble. 

" I must have a share in your restoration, Mr. 
Wade,'' Fanny claimed. '' I see you need a sec- 
ond dose of medicine. Hand me the flask, Mary- 
What shaU I pour from this magic bottle ? juice of 
Rhine, blood of Burgundy, fire of Spain, bubble 
of Rheims, beeswing of Oporto, honey of Cyprus, 
nectar, or whiskey ? Whiskey is vulgar, but the 
proper thing, on the whole, for these occasions. I 
prescribe it." And she gave him another little 
draught to imbibe. 

He took it kindly, for her sake, — and not alone 
for that, but for its own respectable sake. His re- 
covery was complete. His head, to be sure, sang 
a little still, and ached not a little. Some fellows 
would have gone on the sick list with such a wound. 
Perhaps he would, if he had had a trouble to dodge. 
But here instead was a pleasure to follow. So he 
began to move about slowly, watching the ladies. 

Fanny was a novice in the Art, and this was her 
first day this winter. She skated timidly, holding 
Peter very tightly. She went into the dearest little 
panics for fear of tumbles, and uttered the most 
musical screams and laughs. And if she succeeded 
in taking a few brave strokes and finished with a 
neat slide, she pleaded for a verdict of " Well 
done I" with such an appealing smile and such a 



186 LOVE AND SKATES. 

fine show of dimples that every one was fascinated 
and applauded heartily. 

Miss Damer skated as became her free and vigor- 
ous character. She had passed her Little Go as a 
scholar, and was now steadily winning her way 
through the list of achievements, before given, to- 
ward the Great Go. To-day she was at work at 
small circles backward. Presently she wound off 
a series of perfectly neat ones, and, looking up, 
pleased with her prowess, caught Wade's admiring 
eye. At this she smiled and gave an arch little 
womanly nod of self-approval, which also demanded 
masculine sympathy before it was quite a perfect 
emotion. 

With this charming gesture, the alert feather in 
her Amazonian £at nodded, too, as if it admired its 
lovely mistress. 

Wade was thrilled. " Brava ! '' he cried, in an- 
swer to the part of her look which asked sympa- 
thy ; and then, in reply to the implied challenge, 
he forgot his hurt and his shock, and struck into 
the same figure. 

He tried not to surpass his fair exemplar too cru- 
elly. But he did his peripheries well enough to get 
a repetition of the captivating nod and a Bravo I 
from the lady. 

'' Bravo I '' said she. '' But do .not tax your 
.strength too soon." 

She began to feel that she was expressing too 
much interest in the stranger. It was a new sen- 
sation for her to care whether men fell or got up. 



LOVE IN THE FIRST DEGREE. 187 

A new seDsation. She rather liked it. She was 
a trifle ashamed of it. In either case, she did 
not wish to show that it was in her heart. The 
consciousness of concealment flushed her damask 
cheek. 

It was a damask cheek. All her hues were cool 
and pearly ; while Wade, Saxon too, had hot gold- 
en tints in his hair and moustache, and his color, 
now returning, was good strong red with plenty of 
bronze in it. 

" Thank you,'^ he replied. " My force has all 
come back. You have electrified me.'^ 

A civil nothing ; but meaning managed to get 
into his tone and look, whether he would or not. 

Which he perceiving, on his part began to feel 
guilty. 

Of what crime ? 

Of the very same crime as hers, — the most an- 
cient and most pardonable crime of youth and 
maiden, — that sweet and guiltless crime of love in 
the first degree. 

So, without troubling themselves to analyze their 
feelings, they found a piquant pleasure in skating 
together, — she in admiring his tour^ deforce, and 
he in instructing her. 

"Look, Peter ! " said Mrs. Skerrett, pointing to 
the other pair skating, he on the backward roll, she 
on the forward, with hands crossed and locked ; — 
such contacts are permitted in skating, as in dan- 
cing. *' Your hero and my heroine have dropped 
into an intimacy.'' 



188 LOVE AND SKATES. 

" None but the Plucky deserve the Pretty/^ says 
Peter. 

'' But he seems to be such a fine fellow, — sup- 
pose she should n't — '' 

The pretty face looked anxious. 

" Suppose he should n't/' Peter on the masculine 
behalf returned. 

" He cannot help it : Mary is so noble, — and so 
charming, when she does not disdain to be." 

" I do not believe she can help it. She cannot 
disdain Wade. He carries too many guns for that. 
He is just as fine as she is. He was a hero when I 
first knew him. His face does not show an atom 
of change ; and you know what Mr. Churm told us 
of his chivalric deeds elsewhere, and how he tamed 
and reformed Dunderbunk. He is crystal grit, as 
crystalline and gritty as he can be." 

" Grit seems to be your symbol of the highest 
qualities. It certainly is a better thing in man 
than in ice-cream. But, Peter, suppose this should 
be a true love and should not run smooth ? " 

" What consequence is the smooth running, so 
long as there is strong running and a final getting 
in neck and neck at the winning-post ? " 

''But," still pleaded the anxious soul, — having 
no anxieties of her own, she was always suff'ering 
for others, — "he seems to be such a fine fellow I 
and she is so hard to win ! " 

'' Am I a fine fellow ? " 

''No, — horrid!" 

*' The truth, — or I let you tumble." 



L0\^ IN THE FIRST DEGREE. 189 

*' Well, upon compulsion, I admit that you are/' 

" Then being a fine fellow does not diminish the 
said fellow's chances of being blessed with a wife 
quite superfine." 

^' If I thought you were personal, Peter, I should 
object to the mercantile adjective. ' Superfine,' 
indeed ! " 

'' 1 am personal. I withdraw the obnoxious 
phrase, and substitute transcendent. No, Fanny 
dear, I read Wade's experience in my own. I do 
not feel very much concerned about him. He is 
big enough to take care of himself. A man who 
is sincere, self-possessed, and steady does not get 
into miseries with beautiful Amazons like our 
friend. He knows too much to try to make his 
love run up hill ; but let it once get started, rough 
running gives it vim. Wade will love like a del- 
uge, when he sees that he may, and I 'd advise 
obstacles to stand off." 

*' It was pretty, Peter, to see cold Mary Damer 
so gentle and almost tender." 

*' I always have loved to see the first beginnings 
of what looks like love, since I saw ours." 

'' Ours," she said, — " it seems like yesterday," 

And then together they recalled that fair picture 
against its dark ground of sorrow, and so went 
on refreshing the emotions of that time until Fanny 
smiling said, — 

''There must be something magical in skates, 
for here we are talking sentimentally like a pair of 
young lovers." 



190 LOVE AND SKATES. 

*' Health and love are cause and effect/' says 
Peter, sententiously. 

Meanwhile Wade had been fast skating into the 
good graces of his companion. Perhaps the rap 
on his head had deranged him. He certainly tossed 
himself about in a reckless and insane way. Still 
he justified his conduct by never tumbling again, 
and by inventing new devices with bewildering 
rapidity. 

This pair were not at all sentimental. Indeed, 
their talk was quite technical : all about rings and 
edges, and heel and toe, — what skates are best, 
and who best use them. There is an immense 
amount of sympathy to be exchanged on such 
topics, and it wa^ somewhat significant that they 
avoided other themes where they might not sym- 
pathize so thoroughly. The negative part of a 
conversation is often as important as its positive. 

So the four entertained themselves finely, some- 
times as a quartette, sometimes as two duos with 
proper changes of partners, until the clear west 
began to grow golden and the clear east pink with 
sunset. 

" It is a pity to go,'' said Peter Skerrett. 
" Everything here is perfection and Fine Art ; but 
we must not be unfaithful to dinner. Dinner 
would have a right to punish us, if we did not 
encourage its efforts to be Fine Art also." 

"Now, Mr. Wade," Fanny commanded, "your 
most heroic series of exploits, to close this heroic 
day." 



LOVE IN THE FIRST DEGREE. 191 

He nimbly dashed through his list. The ice was 
traced with a labyrinth of involuted convolutions. 

Wade's last turn brought him to the very spot 
of his tumble. 

'^ Ah ! " said he. '' Here is the oar that tripped 
me, with ' Wade, his mark,' gashed into it. If I 
had not this'' — he touched Miss Darner's hand- 
kerchief — " for a souvenir, I think I would dig up 
the oar and carry it home." 

'' Let it melt out and float away in the spring," 
Mary said. '* It may be a perch for a sea-gull or 
a buoy for a drowning man." 

Here, if this were a long story instead of a short 
one, might be given a description of Peter Sker- 
rett's house and the menu of Mrs. Skerrett's 
dinner. Peter and his wife had both been to great 
pillory dinners, ad nauseam, and learnt what to 
avoid. How not to be bored is the object of all 
civilization, and the Skerretts had discovered the 
methods. 

I must dismiss the dinner and the evening, 
stamped with the general epithet, Perfection. 

" You will join us again to-morrow on the river," 
said Mrs. Skerrett, as Wade rose to go. 

" To-morrow I go to town to report to my Di- 
rectors." 

" Then next day." 

'' Next day, with pleasure." 

Wade departed and marked this halcyon day 
with white chalk, as the whitest, brightest, sweet- 
est of his life. 



192 LOVE AND SKATES. 



CHAPTER X 



FOREBODINGS. 

Jubilation I Jubilation now, instead of Conster- 
nation, in the oflfice of Mr. Benjamin Brummage in 
Wall Street. 

President Brummage had convoked his Directors 
to hear the First Semiannual Report of the new 
Superintendent and Dictator of Dunderbunk. 

And there they sat around the green table, no 
longer forlorn and dreading a failure, but all chuck- 
ling with satisfaction over their prosperity. 

They were a happy and hilarious family now, — 
so hilarious that the President was obliged to be 
always rapping to Orderr with his paper-knife. 

Every one of these gentlemen was proud of him- 
self as a Director of so successful a Company. 
The Dunderbunk advertisement might now con- 
sider itself as permanent in the newspapers, and 
the Treasurer had very unnecessarily inserted the 
notice of a dividend, which everybody knew of 
already. 

When Mr. Churm was not by, they all claimed 
the honor of having discovered Wade, or at least 
of having been the first to appreciate him. 

They all invited him to dinner, — the others at 
their houses, Sam Gwelp at his club. 

They had not yet begun to wax fat and kick. 
They still remembered the panic of last summer. 



FOREBODINGS. 193 

They passed a unanimous vote of the most compli- 
mentary confidence in Wade, approved of his sys- 
tem, forced upon him an increase of salary, and 
began to talk of ''launching ouf and doubling 
their capital. In short, they behaved as Directors 
do when all is serene. 

Churm and Wade had a hearty laugh over the 
absurdities of the Board and all their vague propo- 
sitions. 

" Dunderbunk,'' said Churm, " was a company 
started on a sentimental basis, as many others are.'' 

" Mr. Brummage fell in love with pig-iron ? " 

" Precisely. He had been a dry-goods jobber, 
risen from a retailer somewhere in the country. 
He felt a certain lack of dignity in his work. He 
wanted to deal in something more masculine than 
lace and ribbons. He read a sentimental article 
on Iron in the ' Journal of Commerce ' : how Iron 
held the world together ; how it was nerve and 
sinew ; how it was ductile and malleable and other 
things that sounded big ; how without Iron civili- 
zation would stop, and New-Zealanders hunt rats 
among the ruins of London ; how anybody who 
would make two tons of Iron grow where one 
grew before was a benefactor to the human race 
greater than Alexander, Csesar, or Napoleon ; and 
so on, — you know the eloquent style. Brum- 
mage's soul was fired. He determined to be 
greater than the three heroes named. He was 
oozing with unoccupied capital. He went about 
among the other rich jobbers, with the newspaper 

9 M 



194 LOVE AND SKATES. 

article in his hand, and fired their souls. They 
determined to be great Iron-Kings, — magnificent 
thought ! They wanted to read in the newspapers, 
' If all the iron rails made at the Dunderbunk 
Works in the last six months were put together in 
a straight line, they would reach twice round our 
terraqueous globe and seventy-three miles two 
rails over.' So on that poetic foundation they 
started the concern.'' 

Wade laughed. '' But how did you happen to 
be with them ? " 

"Oh! my friend Damer sold them the land for 
the shop and took stock in payment. I came into 
the Board as his executor. Did I never tell you 
so before ? " 

" No." 

" Well, then, be informed that it was in Miss 
Darner's behalf that you knocked down Friend 
Tarbox, and so got your skates for saving her 
property. It 's quite a romance already, Richard, 
my boy ! and I suppose you feel immensely bored 
that you had to come down and meet us old chaps, 
instead of tumbling at her feet on the ice again to- 
day." 

" A tumble in this wet day would be a cold bath 
to romance." 

The Gulf Stream had sent up a warm spoil-sport 
rain that morning. It did not stop, but poured 
furiously the whole day. 

From Cohoes to Spuyten Duyvil, on both sides 
of the river, all the skaters swore at the weather, 



FOREBODINGS. 195 

as profane persons no doubt did when the windows 
of heaven were opened in Noah's time. The 
skateresses did not swear, but savagely said, " It 
is too bad," — and so it was. 

Wade, loaded with the blessings of his Directors, 
took the train next morning for Dunderbunk. 

The weather was still mild and drizzly, but 
promised to clear. As the train rattled along by 
the river. Wade could see that the thin ice was 
breaking up everywhere. In mid-stream a proces- 
sion of blocks was steadily drifting along. Un- 
less Zero came sliding down again pretty soon 
from Boreal regions, the sheets that filled the coves 
and clung to the shores would also sail away south- 
ward, and the whole Hudson be left clear as in mid- 
summer. . 

At Yonkers a down train ranged by the side of 
Wade's train, and, looking out he saw Mr. and 
Mrs. Skerrett alighting. 

He jumped down, rather surprised, to speak to 
them. 

" We have just been telegraphed here," said 
Peter, gravely. '' The son of a widow, a friend of 
ours, was drowned this morning in the soft ice of 
the river. He was a pet of mine, poor fellow ! and 
the mother depends upon me for advice. We have 
come down to say a kind word. Why won't you 
report us to the ladies at my house, and say we 
shall not be at home until the evening train ? 
They do not know the cause of our journey except 
that it is a sad one." 



196 LOVE AND SKATES. 

" Perhaps Mr. Wade will carve their turkey for 
them at dinner, Peter/' Fanny suggested. 

" Bo, Wade ! and keep their spirits up. Din- 
ner 's at six.'' 

Here the engine whistled. Wade promised to 
" shine substitute " at his friend's board, and took 
his place again. The train galloped away. 

Peter and his wife exchanged a bright look over 
the fortunate incident of this meeting, and went on 
their kind way to carry sympathy and such conso- 
lation as might be to the widow. 

The train galloped northward. Until now, the 
beat of its wheels, like the click of an enormous 
metronome, had kept time to jubilant measures 
singing in Wade's brain. He was hurrying back, 
exhilarated with success, to the presence of a 
woman whose smile was finer exhilaration than any 
number of votes of confidence, passed unanimously 
by. any number of conclaves of overjoyed Directors, 
and signed by Brummage after Brummage, with 
the signature of a capitalist in a flurry of delight 
at a ten per cent dividend. 

But into this joyous mood of Wade's the thought 
of death suddenly intruded. He could not keep a 
picture of death and drowning out of his mind. As 
the train sprang along and opened gloomy breadth 
after breadth of the leaden river, clogged with slow- 
drifting files of ice-blocks, he found himself sttiring 
across the dreary waste and forever fancying some 
one sinking there, helpless and alone. 

He seemed to see a brave, bright-eyed, ruddy 



FOREBODINGS. 197 

boy, venturing out carelessly along the edges of 
the weakened ice. Suddenly the ice gives way, the 
little figure sinks, rises, clutches desperately at a 
fragment, struggles a moment, is borne along in the 
relentless flow of the chilly water, stares in vain 
shoreward, and so sinks again with a look of 
agony, and is gone. 

But whenever this inevitable picture grew before 
Wade's eyes, as the drowning figure of his fancy 
vanished, it suddenly changed features, and pre- 
sented the face of Mary Darner, perishing beyond 
succor. 

Of course he knew that this was but a morbid 
vision. Yet that it came at all, and that it so ago- 
nized him, proved the force of his new feeling. 

He had not analyzed it before. This thought of 
death became its touchstone. 

Men like Wade, strong, healthy, earnest, concen- 
trated, straightforward, isolated, judge men and 
women as friends or foes at once and once for all. 
He had recognized in Mary Damer from the first a 
heart as true, whole, noble, and healthy as his own. 
A fine instinct had told him that she was waiting 
for her hero, as he was for his heroine. 

So he suddenly loved her. And yet not sudden- 
ly ; for all his life, and all his lesser forgotten or 
discarded passions, had been training him for this 
master one. 

He suddenly and strongly loved her ; and yet it 
had only been a beautiful bewilderment of uncom- 
prehended delight, until this haunting vision of her 



198 LOVE AND SKATES. 

fair face sinking amid the hungry ice beset him. 
Then he perceived what would be lost to him, if 
she were lost. 

The thought of Death placed itself between him 
and Love. If the love had been merely a pretty 
remembrance of a charming woman, he might have 
dismissed his fancied drowning scene with a little 
emotion of regret. Now, the fancy was an agony. 

He had too much power over himself to enter- 
tain it long. But the grisly thought came unin- 
vited, returned undesired, and no resolute Avaunt, 
even backed by that magic wand, a cigar, availed 
to banish it wholly. 

The sky cleared cold at eleven o'clock. A sharp 
wind drew through the Highlands. •As the train 
rattled round the curve below the tunnel through 
Skerrett^s Point, Wade could see his skating course 
of Christmas-Day with the ladies. Firm ice, glazed 
smooth by the sudden chill after the rain, filled the 
Cove and stretched beyond the Point into the river. 

It was treacherous stuff, beautiful to the eyes of 
a skater, but sure to be weak, and likely to break 
up any moment and join the deliberate headlong 
drift of the masses in mid-current. 

Wade almost dreaded lest his vision should sud- 
denly realize itself, and he should see his enthusi- 
astic companion of the other day sailing gracefully 
along to certain death. 

Nothing living, however, was in sight, except 
here and there a crow, skipping about in the float- 
ing ice. 



FOREBODINGS. 199 

The lover was greatly relieved. He could now 
forewarn the lady against the peril he had imagined. 
The train in a moment dropped him at Dunderbunk. 
He hurried to the Foundry and wrote a note to 
Mrs. Darner. 

'* Mr. Wade presents his compliments to Mrs. 
Damer, and has the honor to inform her that Mr. 
Skerrett has nominated him carver to the ladies to- 
day in their host's place. 

" Mr. Wade hopes that Miss Darner will excuse 
him from his engagement to skate with her this 
afternoon. The ice is dangerous, and Miss Darner 
should on no account venture upon it." 

Perry Purtett was the bearer of this billet. He 
swaggered into Peter Skerrett's hall, and dreadfully 
alarmed the fresh-imported Englishman who an- 
swered the bell, by ordering him in a severe tone, — 

" Hurry up now. White Cravat, with that answer I 
I 'm wanted down to the Works. Steam don't 
bile when I 'm off; and the fly-wheel will never 
buzz another turn, unless I 'm there to motion it 
to move on." 

Mrs. Damer's . gracious reply informed Wade 
" that she should be charmed to see him at dinner, 
etc., and would not fail to transmit his kind warn- 
ing to Miss Damer, when she returned from her 
drive to make calls." 

But when Miss Damer returned in the afternoon, 
her mother was taking a gentle nap over the violet, 
indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red stripes of a 
gorgeous Afghan she was knitting. The daughter 



200 LOVE AND SKATES. 

heard nothing of the billet. The house was lonely 
without Fanny Skerrett. Mr. Wade did not come 
at the appointed hour. Mary was not willing to 
say to herself how much she regretted his absence. 

Had he forgotten the appointment ? 

No, — that was a thought not to be tolerated. 

" A gentleman does not forget/' she thought. 
And she had a thorough confidence, besides, that 
this gentleman was very willing to remember. 

She read a little, fitfully, sang fitfully, moved 
about the house uneasily ; and at last, when it grew 
late, and she was bored and Wade did not arrive, 
she pronounced to herself that he had been detained 
in town. 

This point settled, she took her skates, put on 
her pretty Amazonian hat with its alert feather, 
and went down to waste her beauty and grace on 
the ice, unattended and alone. 



CHAPTER XI. 

CAP'N AMBUSTER'S SKIFF. 

It was a busy afternoon at the Dunderbunk 
Foundry. 

The Superintendent had come back with his 
pocket full of orders. Everybody, from the Czar 
of Russia to the President of the Guano Republic, 



CAP'N AMBUSTER'S SKIFF. 201 

was in the market for machinery. Crisis was gone 
by. Prosperity was come. The world was all 
ready to move, and only waited for a fresh supply 
of wheels, cranks, side-levers, walking-beams, and 
other such muscular creatures of iron, to push 
and tug and swing and revolve and set Progress 
a-going. 

Dunderbunk was to have its full share in supply- 
ing the demand. It was well understood by this 
time that the iron Wade made was as stanch as the 
man who made it. Dunderbunk, therefore, Head 
and Hands, must despatch. 

So it was a busy afternoon at the industrious 
Foundry. The men bestirred themselves. The 
furnaces rumbled. The engine thumped. The 
drums in the finishing-shop hummed merrily their 
lively song of labor. The four trip-hamgiers — 
two bull-headed, two calf-headed — champed, like 
carnivorous maws, upon red bars of iron, and over 
their banquet they roared the big-toned music of 
the trip-hammer chorus, — 

"Now then! hit hard! 
Strike while Iron 's hot. Life 's short. Art 's long." 

By this massive refrain, ringing in at inter- 
vals above the ceaseless buzz, murmur, and clang 
throughout the buildings, every man's work was 
mightily nerved and inspired. Everybody liked to 
hear the sturdy song of these grim vocalists ; and 
whenever they struck in, each solo or duo or qua- 
tuor of men, playing Anvil Chorus, quickened time, 
and all the action and rumor of the busy opera 

9* 



202 LOVE AND SKATES. 

went on more cheerily and lustily. So work kept 
astir like play. 

An hour before sunset, Bill Tarbox stepped into 
Wade's office. Even oily and begrimed, Bill could 
be recognized as a favored lover. He looked more 
a man than ever before. 

" I forgot to mention," says the foreman, " that 
Cap'n Ambuster was in, this morning, to see you. 
He says, that, if the river 's clear enough for him 
to get away from our dock, he '11 go down to the 
City to-morrow, and offers to take freiglit cheap. 
We might put that new walking-beam, we 've just 
rough-finished for the ' Union,' aboard of him." 

** Yes, — if he is sure to go to-morrow. It will 
not do to delay. The owners complained to me 
yesterday that the ' Union ' was in a bad way for 
want of its new machinery. Tell your brother-in- 
law to come here. Bill." 

Tarbox looked sheepishly pleased, and sum- 
moned Perry Purtett. 

" Run down, Perry," said Wade, " to the ' Am- 
buster,' and ask Captain Isaac to step up here a 
moment. Tell him I have some freight to send by 
him." 

Perry moved through the Foundry with his usual 
jaunty step, left his dignity at the door, and ran 
off to the dock. 

The weather had grown fitful. Heavy clouds 
whirled over, trailing snow-flurries. Rarely the 
sun found a cleft in the black canopy to shoot 
a ray through and remind the world that he was 



CAP'N AMBUSTEK'S SKIFF. 203 

still in his place and ready to shine when he 
was wanted. 

Master Perry had a furlong to go before he reached 
the dock. He crossed the stream, kept unfrozen 
by the warm influences of the Foundry. He ran 
through a little dell hedged on each side by dull 
green cedars. It was severely cold now, and our 
young friend condescended to prance and jump 
over the ice-skimmed puddles to keep his blood in 
motion. 

The little rusty, pudgy steamboat lay at the 
down-stream side of the Foundry wharf. Her 
name was so long and her paddle-box so short, 
that the painter, beginning with ambitious large 
letters, had been compelled to abbreviate the last 
syllable. Her title read thus : — 

I. AMBUSTer. 

Certainly a formidable inscription for a steamboat I 

When she hove in sight, Perry halted, resumed 
his stately demeanor, and embarked as if he were a 
Doge entering a Bucentaur to wed a Sea. 

There was nobody on deck to witness the arrival 
and salute the magnifico. 

Perry looked in at the Cap'n^s office. He beheld 
a three-legged stool, a hacked desk, an inky steel- 
pen, an inkless inkstand ; but no Cap'n Ambuster. 

Perry inspected the Capon's state-room. There 
was a cracked looking-glass, into which he looked ; 
a hair-brush suspended by the glass, which he 
used ; a lair of blankets in a berth, which he had 



204 LOVE AND SKATES. 

no present use for ; and a smell of musty boots, 
which nobody with a nose could help smelling. 
Still no Captain Ambuster, nor any of his crew. 

Search in the unsavory kitchen revealed no cook, 
coiled up in a corner, suffering nightmares for the 
last greasy dinner he had brewed in his frying- 
pan. There were no deck hands bundled into 
their bunks. Perry rapped on the chain^box and 
inquired if anybody was within, and nobody an- 
swering, he had to ventriloquize a negative. 

The engine-room, too, was vacant, and quite as 
unsavorj'- as the other dens on board. Perry pat- 
ronized the engine by a pull or two at the valves, 
and continued his tour of inspection. 

The Ambuster's skiff, lying on her forward deck, 
seemed to entertain him vastly. 

'' Jolly I '^ says Perry. And so it was a jolly 
boat in the literal, not the technical sense. 

" The three wise men of Gotham went to sea in 
a bowl ; and here 's the identical craft, '^ says 
Perry. 

He gave the chubby little machine a push with 
his foot. It rolled and wallowed about grotesquely. 
When it was still again, it looked so comic, lying 
contentedly on' its fat side like a pudgy baby, that 
Perry had a roar of laughter, which, like other 
laughter to one's self, did not sound very merry, 
particularly as the north-wind was howling omi- 
nously, and the broken ice, on its downward way, 
was whispering and moaning and talking on in a 
most mysterious and inarticulate manner. 



CAP'N AMBUSTER'S SKIFF. 205 

" Those sheets of ice would crunch up this skiff, 
as pigs do a punkin," thinks Perry. 

And with this thought in his head he looked out 
on the river, and fancied the foolish little vessel 
cast loose and buffeting helplessly about in the 
ice. 

He had been so busy until now, in prying about 
the steamboat and making up his mind that Captain 
and men had all gone off" for a comfortable supper 
on shore, that his eyes had not wandered toward 
the stream. 

Now his glance began to follow the course of 
the icy current. He wondered where all this sup- 
ply of cakes came from, and how many of them 
would escape the stems of ferry-boats below and 
get safe to sea. 

All at once, as he looked lazily along the lazy 
files of ice, his eyes caught a black object drifting 
on a fragment in a wide way of open water oppo- 
site Skerrett's Point, a mile distant. 

Perry's heart stopped beating. He uttered a 
little gasping cry. He sprang ashore, not at all 
like a Doge quitting a Bucentaur. He tore back 
to the Foundry, dashing through the puddles, and, 
never stopping to pick up his cap, burst in upon 
Wade and Bill Tarbox in the oflSce. 

The boy was splashed from head to foot with 
red mud. His light hair, blown wildly about, 
made his ashy face seem paler. He stood panting. 

His dumb terror brought back to Wade's mind 
all the bad omens of the morning. 



206 LOVE AND SKATES. 

'' Speak ! " said he, seizing Perrj fiercely by the 
shoulder. 

The uproar of the Works seemed to hush for an 
instant, while the lad stammered faintly, — 

" There 's somebody carried off in the ice by 
Skerrett's Point. It looks like a woman. And 
there 's nobody to help.^' 



CHAPTER XII. 

IN THE ICE. 

*' Help I help I '' shouted the four trip-hammers, 
bursting in like a magnified echo of the boy^s last 
word. " Help ! help I " all the humming wheels 
and drums repeated more plaintively. 

Wade made for the river. 

This was the moment all his manhood had been 
training and saving for. For this he had kept 
sound and brave from his youth up. 

As he ran, he felt that the only chance of instant 
help was in that queer little bowl-shaped skiff of 
the "Ambuster." 

He had never been conscious that he had ob- 
served it ; but the image had lain latent in his mind, 
biding its time. It might be ten, twenty precious 
moments 'before another boat could be found. This 
one was on the spot to do its duty at once. 



IN THE ICE. 207 

"Somebody carried off, — perhaps a woman/' 
Wade thought. "Not — No, she would not neg- 
lect my warning ! Whoever it is, we must save 
her from this dreadful death ! '^ 

He' sprang on board the little steamboat. She 
was swaying uneasily at her moorings, as the ice 
crowded along and hammered against her stem. 
Wade stared from her deck down the river, with all 
his life at his eyes. 

More than a mile away, below the hemlock- 
crested point, was the dark object Perry had seen, 
still stirring along the edges of the floating ice. A 
broad avenue of leaden-green water wrinkled by 
the cold wind separated the field where this figure 
was moving from the shore. Dark object and its 
footing of gray ice were drifting deliberately far- 
ther and farther away. 

For one instant Wade thought that the terrible 
dread in his heart would paralyze him. But in that 
one moment, while his blood stopped flowing and 
his nerves failed, Bill Tarbox overtook him and was 
there by his side. 

" I brought your cap,'' says Bill, " and our two 
coats." 

Wade put on his cap mechanically. This little 
action calmed him. 

" Bill," said he, "I 'm afraid it is a woman, — a 
dear friend of mine, — a very dear friend." 

Bill, a lover, understood the tone. 

" We '11 take care of her between us," he said. 

The two turned at once to the little tub of a 
boat. 



208 LOVE AND SKATES. 

Oars ? Yes, — slung under the thwarts, — a 
pair of short sculls, worn and split, but with work 
in them still. There they hung ready, — and a 
rusty boat-hook, besides. 

"Find the thole-pins. Bill, while I cut a plug 
for her bottom out of this broomstick,^' Wade said. 

This was done in a moment. Bill threw in the 
coats. 

" Now, together I " 

They lifted the skiff to the gangway. Wade 
jumped down on the ice and received her carefully. 
They ran her along, as far as they could go, and 
launched her in the sludge. 

" Take the sculls, Bill. I '11 work the boat-hook 
in the bow.'' 

Nothing more was said. They thrust out with 
their crazy little cr^ift into the thick of the ice- 
flood. Bill, amidships, dug with his sculls in 
among the huddled cakes. It was clumsy pulling. 
Now this oar and now that would be thrown out. 
He could never get a full stroke. 

Wade in the bow could do better. He jammed 
the blocks aside with his boat-hook. He dragged 
the skiff forward. He steered through the little 
open ways of water. 

Sometimes they came to a broad sheet of solid 
ice. Then it was " Out with her, Bill I '' and they 
were both out and sliding their bowl so quick over, 
that they had not time to go through the rotten 
surface. This was drowning business ; but neither 
could be spared to drown yet. 



IN THE ICE. 209 

In the leads of clear water, the oarsman got 
brave pulls and sent the boat on mightily. Then 
again in the thick porridge of brash ice they lost 
headway, or were baffled and stopped among the 
cakes. Slow work, slow and painful ; and for many 
minutes they seemed to gain nothing upon the 
steady flow of the merciless current. 

A frail craft for such a voyage, this queer little 
half-pumpkin I A frail and leaky shell. She bent 
and cracked from stem to stern among the nipping 
masses. Water oozed in through her dry seams. 
Any moment a rougher touch or a sharper edge 
might cut her through. But that was a risk they 
had accepted. They did not take time to think of 
it, nor to listen to the crunching and crackling 
of the hungry ice around. They urged straight 
on, steadily, eagerly, coolly, spending and saving 
strength. 

Not one moment to lose I The shattering of 
broad sheets of ice around them was a warning of 
what might happen to the frail support of their 
chase. One thrust of the boat-hook sometimes 
cleft a cake that to the eye seemed stout enough 
to bear a heavier weight than a woman's. 

Not one moment to spare ! The dark figure, 
now drifted far below the hemjocks of the Point, 
no longer stirred. It seemed to have sunk upon 
the ice and to be resting there weary and helpless, 
on one side a wide way of lurid water, on the 
other half a mile of moving desolation. 

Far to go, and no time to waste ! 

N 



210 LOVE AND SKATES. 

" Give way, Bill I Give way ! '^ 

- Ay, ay ! ^' 

Both spoke in low tones, hardly louder than the 
whisper of the ice around them. 

By this time hundreds from the Foundry and the 
village were swarming upon the wharf and the 
steamboat. 

"A hundred tar-barrels would n't git up my 
steam in time to do any good," says Cap'n Am- 
buster. "If them two in my skiff don't overhaul 
the man, he 's gone." 

" You 're sure it 's a man ? " says Smith Wheel- 
wright. 

" Take a squint through my glass. I 'm drefful- 
ly afeard it 's a gal; but suthin' 's got into my eye, 
so I can't see." 

Suthin' had got into the old fellow's eye, — 
suthin' saline and acrid, — namely, a tear. 

" It 's a woman," says Wheelwright, — and 
suthin' of the same kind blinded him also. 

Almost sunset now. But the air was suddenly 
filled with perplexing snow-dust from a heavy 
squall. A white curtain dropped between the 
anxious watchers on the wharf and the boatmen. 

The same white curtain hid the dark floating ob- 
ject from its pursuers. There was nothing in sight 
to steer by, now. 

Wade steered by his last glimpse, — by the cur- 
rent, — by the rush of the roaring wind, — by in- 
stinct. 

How merciful that in such a moment a man is 



IN THE ICE. 211 

spared the agony of thought I His agony goes 
into action, intense as life. 

It was bitterly cold. A swash of ice-water filled 
the bottom of the skiff. She was low enough down 
without that. They could not stop to bail, and the 
miniature icebergs they passed began to look sig- 
nificantly over the gunwale. Which would come 
to the point of foundering first, the boat or the 
little floe it aimed for? 

Bitterly cold I The snow hardly melted upon 
Tarbox's bare hands. His fingers stiffened to the 
oars ; but there was life in them still, and still he 
did his work, and never turned to see how the 
steersman was doing his. 

A flight of crows came sailing with the snow- 
squall. They alighted all about on the hummocks, 
and curiously watched the two men battling to save 
life. One black impish bird, more malignant or 
more sympathetic than his fellows, ventured to 
poise on the skiff's stern I 

Bill hissed off this third passenger. The crow 
rose on its toes, let the boat slide away from un- 
der him, and followed croaking dismal good wishes. 

The last sunbeams were now cutting in every- 
where. The thick snow-flurry was like a luminous 
cloud. Suddenly it drew aside. 

The industrious skiff had steered so well and 
made such headway, that there, a hundred yards 
away, safe still, not gone, thank God I was the wo- 
man they sought. 

A dusky mass flung together on a waning rood 
of ice, — Wade could see nothing more. 



212 LOVE AND SKATES. 

Weary or benumbed, or sick with pure forlorn- 
ness and despair, she had drooped down and 
showed no sign of life. 

The great wind shook the river. Her waning 
rood of ice narrowed, foot by foot, like an un- 
thrifty man's heritage. Inch by inch its edges 
wore away, until the little space that half sustained 
the dark heap was no bigger than a coffin-lid. 

Help, now I — now, men, if you are to save 1 
Thrust, Richard Wade, with your boat-hook I Pull, 
Bill, till your oars snap ! Out with your last fren- 
zies of vigor ! For the little raft of ice, even that 
has crumbled beneath its burden, and she sinks, — 
sinks, with succor close at hand I 

Sinks I No, — she rises and floats again. 

She clasps something that holds her head just 
above water. But the unmannerly ice has buffeted 
her hat off. The fragments toss it about, — that 
pretty Amazonian hat, with its alert feather, all 
drooping and draggled. Her fair hair and pure 
forehead are uncovered for an astonished sunbeam 
to alight upon. 

"It is my love, my life. Bill I Give way, once 
more ! '' 

" Way enough ! Steady I Sit where you are. 
Bill, and trim boat, while I lift her out. We can- 
not risk capsizing.'^ 

He raised her carefully, tenderly, with his strong 
arms. 

A bit of wood had buoyed her up for that last 
moment. It was a broken oar with a deep fresh 
gash in it. 



IN THE ICE. 213 

Wade knew his mark, — the cut of his own 
skate-iron. This busy oar was still resolved to 
pla}'" its part in the drama. 

The round little skiff just bore the third person 
without sinking. 

Wade laid Mary Damer against the thwart. She 
would not let go her buoy. He unclasped her 
stiffened hands. This friendly touch found its way 
to her heart. She opened her e^^es and knew him. 

" The ice shall not carry off her hat to frighten 
some mother, down stream," says Bill Tarbox, 
catching it. 

All these proceedings Cap'n Ambuster's spy- 
glass announced to Dunderbunk. 

" They 're h'istin' her up. They 've slumped 
her into the skiff. They 're puttin' for shore. 
Hooray ! " 

Pity a spy-glass cannot shoot cheers a mile and 
a half! 

Perry Purtett instantly led a stampede of half 
Dunderbunk along the railroad-track to learn who 
it was and all about it. 

All about it was, that Miss Damer was safe,, and 
not dangerously frozen, — and that Wade and Tar- 
box had carried her up the hill to her mother at 
Peter Skerrett's. 

Missing the heroes in chief, Dunderbunk made a 
hero of Cap'n Ambuster's skiff. It was transported 
back on the shoulders of the crowd in triumphal 
procession. Perry Purtett carried round the hat 
for a contribution to new paint it, new rib it, new 



214 LOVE AND SKATES. 

gunwale it, give it new sculls and a new boat-hook, 
— indeed, to make a new vessel of the brave little 
bowl. 

" I 'm afeard," says Cap'n Ambuster, " that, 
when I git a harnsome new skiff, I shall want a 
harnsome new steamboat, and then the boat will go 
to cruisin' round for a harnsome new Cap'n." 

And now for the end of this story. • 

Healthy love-stories always end in happy mar- 
riages. 

So ends this story, begun as to its love portion 
by the little romance of a tumble, and continued 
by the bigger romance of a rescue. 

Of course there were incidents enough to fill a 
volume, obstacles enough to fill a volume, and de- 
velopment of character enough to fill a tome thick 
as " Webster's Unabridged," before the happy end 
of the beginning of the Wade-Damer joint history. 

But we can safely take for granted that, the lover 
being true and manly, and the lady true and wo- 
manly, and both possessed of the high moral quali- 
ties necessary to artistic skating, they will go on 
understanding each other better, until they are as 
one as two can be. 

Masculine reader, attend to the moral of this 
tale : — 

Skate well, be a hero, bravely deserve the fair, 
prove your deserts by your deeds, find your ''per- 
fect woman nobly planned to warm, to comfort, and 
command," catch her when found, and you are 
Blest. 



IN THE ICE. 215 

Reader of the gentler sex, likewise attend : — 
All the essential blessings of life accompany a 
true heart and a good complexion. Skate vigor- 
ously ; then your heart will beat true, your cheeks 
will bloom, your appointed lover will see your beau- 
tiful soul shining through your beautiful face, he 
will tell you so, and after sufficient circumlocution 
he will Pop, you will accept, and your lives will 
glide sweetly as skating on virgin ice to silver 
music. 



mW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 



10 



NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT, 

OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 



THROUGH THE CITY. 



At three o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, April 
19th, we took our peacemaker, a neat twelve-pound 
brass howitzer, down from the Seventh Regiment 
Armory, and stationed it in the rear of the build- 
ing. The twin peacemaker is somewhere near us, 
but entirely hidden by this enormous crowd. 

An enormous crowd I of both sexes, of every 
age and condition. The men offer all kinds of tru- 
culent and patriotic hopes ; the women shed tears, 
and say, " God bless you, boys ! '' 

This is a part of the town where baddish cigars 
prevail. But good or bad, I am ordered to keep 
all away from the gun. So the throng stands back, 
peers curiously over the heads of its junior mem- 
bers, and seems to be taking the measure of my 
coffin. 

After a patient hour of this, the word is given, 
we fall in, our two guns find their places at the 
right of the line of march, we move on through the 
thickening crowd. 



220 NEW YOKK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

At a great house on the left, as we pass the As- 
tor Library, I see a handkerchief waving for me. 
Yes ! it is she who made the sandwiches in my 
knapsack. They were a trifle too thick, as I after- 
wards discovered, but otherwise perfection. Be 
these my thanks and the thanks of hungry com- 
rades who had bites of them ! 

At the corner of Great Jones Street we halted 
for half an hour, — then, everything ready, we 
marched down Broadway. 

It was worth a life, that march. Only one who 
passed, as we did, through that tempest of cheers, 
two miles long, can know the terrible enthusiasm 
of the occasion. I could hardly hear the rattle of 
our own gun-carriages, and only once or twice the 
music of our band came to me muffled and quelled 
by the uproar. We knew now, if we had not be- 
fore divined it, that our great city was with us as 
one man, utterly united in the great cause we were 
marching to sustain. 

This grand fact I learned by two senses. If hun- 
dreds of thousands roared it into my ears, thou- 
sands slapped it into my back. My fellow-citizens 
smote me on the knapsack, as I went by at the gun- 
rope, and encouraged me each in his own dialect. 
" Bully for you ! " alternated with benedictions, in 
the proportion of two " bullies '' to one blessing. 

I was not BO fortunate as to receive more sub- 
stantial tokens of sympathy. But there were part- 
ing gifts showered on the regiment, enough to es- 
tablish a variety-shop. Handkerchiefs, of course, 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 221 

came floating down upon us from the windows, like 
a snow. Pretty little gloves pelted us with love- 
taps. The sterner sex forced upon us pocket- 
knives new and jagged, combs, soap, slippers, boxes 
of matches, cigars by the dozen and the hundred, 
pipes to smoke shag and pipes to smoke Latakia, 
fruit, eggs, and sandwiches. One fellow got a new 
purse with ten bright quarter-eagles. 

At the corner of Grand Street, or thereabouts, 
a "bhoy '^ in red flannel shirt and black dress pan- 
taloons, leaning back against the crowd with 
Herculean shoulders, called me, — '' Saiiy, bully I 
take my dorg ! he 's one of the kind that holds till 
he draps.'' This gentleman, with his animal, was 
instantly shoved back by the police, and the 
Seventh lost the " dorg." 

These were the comic incidents of the march, 
but underlying all was the tragic sentiment that 
we might have tragic work presently to do. The 
news of the rascal attack in Baltimore on the Mas- 
sachusetts Sixth had just come in. Ours might 
be the same chance. If there were any of us not 
in earnest before, the story of the day would 
steady us. So we said good-by to Broadway, 
moved down Cortlandt Street under a bower of 
flags, and at half past six shoved ofi* in the ferry- 
boat. 

Everybody has heard how Jersey City turned 
out and filled up the Railroad Station, like an 
opera-house, to give God-speed to us as a repre- 
sentative body, a guaranty of the unquestioning 



222 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

loyalty of the " conservative " class in New York. 
Everybody has heard how the State of New Jer- 
sey, along the railroad line, stood through the 
evening and the night to shout their quota of good 
wishes. At every station the Jersey men were 
there, uproarious as Jerseymen, to shake our hands 
and wish us a happy despatch. I think I did not 
see a rod of ground without its man, from dusk 
till dawn, from the Hudson to the Delaware. 

Upon the train we made a jolly night of it. All 
knew that the more a man sings, the better he is 
likely to fight. So we sang more than we slept, 
and, in fact, that has been our history ever since. 

PHILADELPHIA. 

At sunrise we were at the station in Philadel- 
phia, and dismissed for an hour. Some hundreds 
of us made up Broad Street for the Lapierre House 
to breakfast. When I arrived, I found every 
place at table filled and every waiter ten deep 
with orders. So, being an old campaigner, I fol- 
lowed up the stream of provender to the fountain- 
head, the kitchen. Half a dozen other old cam- 
paigners were already there, most hospitably enter- 
tained by the cooks. They served us, hot and hot, 
with the best of their best, straight from the grid- 
iron and the pan. I hope, if I live to breakfast 
again in the Lapierre House, that I may be allowed 
to help myself and choose for myself below-stairs. 

When we rendezvoused at the train, we found 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 223 

that the orders were for every man to provide him- 
self three days' rations in the neighborhood, and 
be ready for a start at a moment's notice. 

A mountain of bread was already piled up in 
the station. I stuck my bayonet through a stout 
loaf, and, with a dozen comrades armed in the 
same way, went foraging about for other vivers. 

It is a poor part of Philadelphia ; but whatever 
they had in the shops or the houses seemed to be 
at our disposition. 

I stopped at a corner shop to ask for pork, and 
was amicably assailed by an earnest dame, — Irish, 
I am pleased to say. She thrust her last loaf upon 
me, and sighed that it was not baked that morn- 
ing for my '^ honor's service." 

A little farther on, two kindly Quaker ladies 
compelled- me to step in. " What could they 
do ? " they asked eagerly. " They had no meat 
in the house ; but could we eat eggs ? They had 
in the house a dozen and a half, new-laid." So 
the pot to the fire, and the eggs boiled, and bagged 
by myself and that tall Saxon, my friend E., of the 
Sixth Company. While the eggs simmered, the 
two ladies thee-ed us prayerfully and tearfully, 
hoping that God would save our country from 
blood, unless blood must be shed to preserve Law 
and Liberty. 

Nothing definite from Baltimore when we re- 
turned to the station. We stood by, waiting 
orders. About noon the Eighth Massachusetts 
Regiment took the train southward. Our regiment 



224 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

was ready to a man to try its strength with the 
Plug Uglies. If there had been any voting on the 
subject, the pLan to follow the straight road to 
Washington would have been accepted by acclama- 
tion. But the higher powers deemed that "the 
longest way round was the shortest way home/' 
and no doubt their decision was wise. The event 
proved it. 

At two o'clock came the word to "fall in." We 
handled our howitzers again, and marched down 
Jefferson Avenue to the steamer "Boston" to em- 
bark. 

To embark for what port ? For Washington, of 
course, finally ; but by what route ? That was to 
remain in doubt to us privates for a day or two. 

The Boston is a steamer of the outside line from 
Philadelphia to New York. She just held our le- 
gion. We tramped on board, and were allotted 
about the craft from the top to the bottom story. 
We took tents, traps, and grub on board, and 
steamed away down the Delaware in the sweet af- 
ternoon of April. If ever the heavens smiled fair 
weather on any campaign, they have done so on 
ours. 

THE "BOSTON." 

Soldiers on shipboard are proverbially fish out 
of water. We could not be called by the good old 
nickname of "lobsters" by the crew. Our gray 
jackets saved the sobriquet. But we floundered 
about the crowded vessel like boiling victims in a 



OUR MAECH TO WASHINGTON. 225 

pot. At last we found our places, and laid our- 
selves about the decks to tan or bronze or burn 
scarlet, according to complexion. There were 
plenty of cheeks of lobster-hue before next evening 
on the Boston. 

A thousand young fellows turned loose on ship- 
board were sure to make themselves merry. Let 
the reader imagine that I We were like any other 
excursionists, except that the stacks of bright guns 
were always present to remind us of our errand, 
and regular guard-mounting and drill went on all 
the time. The young citizens growled or laughed 
at the minor hardships of the hasty outfit, and 
toughened rapidly to business. 

Sunday, the 21st, was a long and somewhat anx- 
ious day. While we were bowling along in the 
sweet sunshine and sweeter moonlight of the hal- 
cyon time. Uncle Sam might be dethroned by some- 
body in buckram, or Baltimore burnt by the boys 
from Lynn or Marblehead, revenging the massacre 
of their fellows. Every one begins to comprehend 
the fiery eagerness of men who live in historic 
times. " I wish I had control of chain-lightning 
for a few minutes," says 0., the droll fellow of our 
company. " I 'd make it come thick and heavy 
and knock spots out of Secession. '^ 

At early dawn of Monday, the 22d, after feeling 
along slowly all night, we see the harbor of Annap- 
olis. A frigate with sails unbent lies at anchor. 
She flies the stars and stripes. Hurrah ! 

A large steamboat is aground farther in. As 
10* o 



226 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

soon as we can see anytliiug, we catcli the glitter 
of bayonets on board. 

By and by boats come oif, and we get news that 
the steamer is the " Maryland," a ferry-boat of the 
Philadelphia and Baltimore Railroad. The Massa- 
chusetts Eighth Regiment had been just in time to 
seize her on the north side of the Chesapeake. 
They learned that she was to be carried off by the 
crew and leave them blockaded. So they shot their 
Zouaves ahead as skirmishers. The fine fellows 
rattled on board, and before the steamboat had time 
to take a turn or open a valve, she was held by 
Massachusetts in trust for Uncle Sam. Hurrah 
for the most important prize thus far in the war 1 
It probably saved the " Constitution," " Old Iron- 
sides," from capture by the traitors. It probably 
saved Annapolis, and kept Maryland open without 
bloodshed. 

As soon as the Massachusetts Regiment had 
made prize of the ferry-boat, a call was made for 
engineers to run her. Some twenty men at once 
stepped to the front. We of the New York Sev- 
enth afterwards concluded that whatever was need- 
ed in the way of skill or handicraft could be found 
among those brother Yankees. They were the men 
to make armies of. They could tailor for them- 
selves, shoe themselves, do their own blacksmith- 
ing, gun-smithing, and all other work that calls for 
sturdy arms and nimble fingers. In fact, I have 
such profound confidence in the universal accom- 
plishment of the Massachusetts Eighth, that I have 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 227 

no doubt, if the order were, " Poets to the front ! '^ 
*' Painters present arms V '' Sculptors charge bag- 
onets I '^ a baker's dozen out of every company 
would respond. 

Well, to go on with their story, — when they had 
taken their prize, they drove her straight down- 
stream to Annapolis, the nearest point to Washing- 
ton. There they found the Naval Academy in dan- 
ger of attack, and Old Ironsides — serving as a 
practice-ship for the future midshipmen — also ex- 
posed. The call was now for seamen to man the 
old craft and save her from a worse enemy than 
her prototype met in the " Guerriere." Seamen ? 
Of course ! They were Marblehead men, Glouces- 
ter men, Beverly men, seamen all, par excellence! 
They clapped on the frigate to aid the middies, and 
by and by started her out into the stream. In do- 
ing this their own pilot took the chance to run them 
purposely on a shoal in the intricate channel. A 
great error of judgment on his part I as he per- 
ceived, when he found himself in irons and in con- 
finement. " The days of trifling with traitors are 
over ! '' think the Eighth Regiment of Massachu- 
setts. 

But there they were, hard and fast on the shoal, 
when we came up. Nothing to nibble on but knobs 
of anthracite. Nothing to sleep on softer or clean- 
er than coal-dust. Nothing to drink but the brack- 
ish water under their keel. " Rather rough I '' so 
they afterward patiently told us. 

Meantime the Constitution had got hold of a tug, 



228 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

and was making her way to an anchorage where 
her guns commanded everything and everybody. 
Good and true men chuckled greatly over this. The 
stars and stripes also were still up at the fort at 
the Naval Academy. 

Our dread, that, while we were off at sea, some 
great and perhaps fatal harm had been suffered, 
was greatly lightened by these good omens. If 
Annapolis was safe, why not Washington safe also ? 
If treachery had got head at the capital, would not 
treachery have reached out its hand and snatched 
this doorway ? These were our speculations as we 
began to discern objects, before we heard news. 

But news came presently. Boats pulled off to 
us. Our officers were put into communication 
with the shore. The scanty facts of our position 
became known from man to man. We privates 
have greatly the advantage in battling with the 
doubt of such a time. We know that we have 
nothing to do with rumors. Orders are what wo 
go by. And orders are Facts. 

We lay a long, lingering day, off Annapolis. 
The air was full of doubt, and we were eager to be 
let loose. All this while the Maryland stuck fast 
on the bar. We could see them, half a mile off, 
making every effort to lighten her. The soldiers 
tramped forward and aft, danced on her decks, shot 
overboard a heavy baggage-truck. We saw them 
start the truck for the stern with a cheer. It 
crashed down. One end stuck in the mud. The 
other fell back and rested on the boat. They went 
at it with axes, and presently it was clear. 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 229 

As the tide rose, we gave our grounded friends 
a lift with a hawser. No go ! The Boston tugged 
in vain. We got near enough to see the whites of 
the Massachusetts eyes, and their unlucky faces 
and uniforms all grimy with their lodgings in the 
coal-dust. They could not have been blacker, if 
they had been breathing battle-smoke and dust all 
day. That experience was clear gain to them. 

By and by, greatly to the delight of the impa- 
tient Seventh, the Boston was headed for shore. 
Never speak ill of the beast you bestraddle I There- 
fore requiescat Boston ! may her ribs lie light on 
soft sand when she goes to pieces ! may her en- 
gines be cut up into bracelets for the arms of the 
patriotic fair ! good by to her, dear old, close, dir- 
ty, slow coach ! She served her country well in a 
moment of trial. Who knows but she saved it ? 
It was a race to see who should first get to Wash- 
ington, — and we and the Virginia mob, in alliance 
with the District mob, were perhaps nip and tuck 
for the goal. 

ANNAPOLIS. 

So the Seventh Regiment landed and took An- 
napolis. We were the first troops ashore. 

The middies of the Naval Academ}^ no doubt be- 
lieve that they had their quarters secure. The 
Massachusetts boys are satisfied that tliey first 
took the town in charge. And so they did. 

But the Seventh took it a little more. Not, of 



230 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

course, from its loyal men, but for its loyal men, — 
for loyal Maryland, and for the Union. 

Has anybody seen Annapolis ? It is a pictu- 
resque old place, sleepy enough, and astonished to 
find itself wide-awaked by a war, and obliged to 
take responsibility and share for good and ill in the 
movement of its time. The buildings of the Naval 
Academy stand parallel with the river Severn, 
with a green plateau toward the water and a lovely 
green lawn toward the town. All the scene was 
fresh and fair with April, and I fancied, as the Bos- 
ton touched the wharf, that I discerned the sweet 
fragrance of apple-blossoms coming with the spring- 
time airs. 

I hope that the companies of the Seventh, should 
the day arrive, will charge upon horrid batteries or 
serried ranks with as much alacrity as they marched 
ashore on the greensward of the Naval Academy. 
We disembarked, and were halted in line between 
the buildings and the river. 

Presently, while we stood at ease, people began 
to arrive, — some with smallish fruit to sell, some 
with smaller news to give. Nobody knew whether 
Washington was taken. Nobody knew whether 
Jeff Davis was now spitting in the Presidential 
spittoon, and scribbling his distiches with the nib 
of the Presidential goose-quill. We were absolute- 
ly in doubt whether a seemingly inoffensive knot of 
rustics, on a mound without the enclosure, might 
not, at tap of drum, unmask a battery of giant co- 
lumbiads, and belch blazes at us, raking our line. 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 231 

Nothing so entertaining happened. It was a 
pai^tde, not a battle. At sunset our band played 
strains sweet enough to pacify all Secession, if 
Secession had music in its soul. Coffee, hot from 
the coppers of the Naval School, and biscuit were 
served out to us ; and while we supped, we talked 
with our visitors, such as were allowed to ap- 
proach. 

First the boys of the School — fine little blue- 
• jackets — had their story to tell. 

"Do you see that white farm-house, across the 
river ? '' says a brave pigmy of a chap in navy 
uniform. " That is head-quarters for Secession. 
They were going to take the School from us. Sir, 
and the frigate ; but we 've got ahead of ^em, now 
you and the Massachusetts boys have come down,'^ 
— and he twinkled all over with delight. "We 
can't study any more. We are on guard all the 
time. We Ve got howitzers, too, and we 'd like 
you to see, to-morrow, on drill, how we can handle 
'em. One of their boats came by our sentry last 
night," (a sentry probably five feet high,) "and 
he blazed away. Sir. So they thought they 
wouldn't try us that time." 

It was plain that these young souls had been 
well tried by the treachery about them. They, 
too, had felt the pang of the disloyalty of com- 
rades. Nearly a hundred of the boys had been 
spoilt by the base example of their elders in the 
repudiating States, and had resigned. 

After the middies, came anxious citizens from 



232 NEW YORK SEVENTH EEGIMENT. 

the town. Scared, all of them. Now that we 
were come and assured them that persons and 
property were to be protected, they ventured to 
speak of the disgusting tyranny to which they, 
American citizens, had been subjected. We came 
into contact here with utter social anarchy. No 
man, unless he was ready to risk assault, loss of 
property, exile, dared to act or talk like a freeman. 
" This great wrong must be righted,'' think the 
Seventh Regiment, as one man. So we tried to 
reassure the Annapolitans that we meant to do our 
duty as the nation's armed police, and mob-law 
was to be put down, so far as we could do it. 

Here, too, voices of war met us. The country 
was stirred up. If the rural population did not give 
us a bastard imitation of Lexington and Concord, 
as we tried to gain Washington, all Pluguglydom 
would treat us a la Plugagly somewhere near the 
junction of the Annapolis and Baltimore and Wash- 
ington Railroad. The Seventh must be ready to 
shoot. 

At dusk we were marched up to the Academy 
and quartered about in the buildings, — some in the 
fort, some in the recitation-halls. We lay down on 
our blankets and knapsacks. Up to this time our 
sleep and diet had been severely scanty. 

We stayed all next day at Annapolis. The Bos- 
ton brought the Massachusetts Eighth ashore that 
night. Poor fellows 1 what a figure they cut, when 
we found them bivouacked on the Academy grounds 
next morning ! To begin : They had come off in 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 233 

hot patriotic haste, half-uniformed and half-outfitted. 
Finding that Baltimore had been taken by its own 
loafers and traitors, and that the Chesapeake ferry 
was impracticable, had obliged them to change line 
of march. They were out of grub. They were 
parched dry for want of water on the ferry-boat. 
Nobody could decipher Caucasian, much less Bun- 
ker-Hill Yankee, in their grimy visages. 

But, hungry, thirsty, grimy, these fellows were 

GRIT. 

Massachusetts ought to be proud of such hardy, 
cheerful, faithful sons. 

We of the Seventh are proud, for our part, that 
it was our privilege to share our rations with them, 
and to begin a fraternization which grows closer 
every day and will be historical. 

But I must make a shorter story. We drilled 
and were reviewed that morning on the Academy 
parade. In the afternoon the Naval School paraded 
their last before they gave up their barracks to the 
coming soldiery. So ended the 23d of April. 

•Midnight, 24th. We were rattled up by an 
alarm, — perhaps a sham one, to keep us awake 
and lively. In a moment, the whole regiment was 
in order of battle in the moonlight on the parade. 
It was a most brilliant spectacle, as company after 
company rushed forward, with rifles glittering, to 
take their places in the array. 

After this pretty spirt, we were rationed with 
pork, beef, and bread for three days, and ordered to 
be ready to march on the instant. 



234 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

WHAT THE MASSACHUSETTS EIGHTH HAD BEEN DOING. 

Meantime General Butler's command, the Massa- 
chusetts Eighth, had been busy knocking disorder 
in the head. 

Presently after their landing, and before they 
were refreshed, they pushed companies out to oc- 
cupy the railroad-track beyond the town. 

They found it torn up. No doubt the scamps 
who did the shabby job fancied that there would 
be no more travel that way until strawberry- time. 
They fancied the Yankees would sit down on the 
fences and begin to whittle white-oak toothpicks, 
darning the rebels, through their noses, meanwhile. 

I know these men of the Eighth can whittle, and 
I presume they can say " Darn it,'^ if occasion re- 
quires ; but just now track-laying was the business 
on hand. 

"Wanted, experienced track-layers!'^ was the 
word along the files. 

All at once the line of the road became densely 
populated with experienced track-layers, fresh from 
Massachusetts. 

Presto change ! the rails were relaid, spiked, and 
the roadway levelled and better ballasted than any 
road I ever saw south of Mason and Dixon's line. 
*' We must leave a good job for these folks to model 
after/' say the Massachusetts Eighth. 

A track without a train is as useless as a gun 
without a man. Train and engine must be had. 
" Uncle Sam's mails and troops cannot be stopped 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 235 

another minute/' our energetic friends conclude. 
So, — the railroad company's people being either 
frightened or false, — in marches Massachusetts to 
the station. ''We, the People of the United States, 
want rolling-stock for the use of the Union,'' they 
said, or words to that effect. 

The engine — a frowzy machine at the best — 
had been purposely disabled. 

Here appeared the deus ex machina, Charles 
Homans, Beverly Light Guard, Company E, Eighth 
Massachusetts Regiment. 

That is the man, name and titles in full, and he 
deserves well of his country. 

He took a quiet squint at the engine, — it was 
as helpless as a boned turkey, — and he found 
" Charles Homans, his mark," written all over it. 

The old rattletrap was an old friend. Charles 
Homans had had a share in building it. The 
machine and the man said, ''How d'y' do?" at 
once. Homans called for a gang of engine- 
builders. Of course they swarmed out of the 
ranks. They passed their hands over the locomo- 
tive a few times, and presently it was ready to 
whistle and wheeze and rumble and gallop, as if 
no traitor had ever tried to steal the go and the 
music out of it. 

This had all been done during the afternoon of 
the 23d. During the night, the renovated engine 
was kept cruising up and down the track to see 
all clear. Guards of the Eighth were also posted 
to protect passage. 



236 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

Our commander had, I presume, been co-operat- 
ing with General Butler in this business. The 
Naval Academy authorities had given us every 
despatch and assistance, and the middies, frank, 
personal hospitality. The day was halcyon, the 
grass was green and soft, the apple-trees were just 
in blossom : it was a day to be remembered. 

Many of us will remember it, and show the 
marks of it for months, as the day we had our 
heads cropped. By evening there was hardly one 
poll in the Seventh tenable by anybody's grip. 
Most sat in the shade and were shorn by a barber. 
A few were honored with a clip by the artist hand 
of the petit caporal of our Engineer Company. 

While I rattle off these trifling details, let me 
not fail to call attention to the grave service done 
by our regiment, by its arrival, at the nick of time, 
at Annapolis. No clearer special Providence 
could have happened. The country-people of the 
traitor sort were aroused. Baltimore and its mob 
were but two hours away. The Constitution had 
been hauled out of reach of a rush by the Mas- 
sachusetts men, — first on the ground, — but was 
half manned and not fully secure. And there lay 
the Maryland, helpless on the shoal, with six or 
seven hundred souls on board, so near the shore 
that the late Captain Rynders's gun could have 
sunk her from some ambush. 

Yes ! the Seventh Regiment at Annapolis was 
the Right Man in the Right Place ! 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 237 

OUR MORNING MARCH. 

Reveille. As nobody pronounces this word 
a la fraiK^adse, as everybody calls it " Revelee/' 
why not drop it, as an affectation, and translate it 
the " Stir your Stumps,'^ the '' Peel your Eyes,'' 
the " Tumble Up,'' or literally the " Wake " ? 

Our suorers had kept up this call so lustily 
since midnight, that, when the drums sounded it, 
we were all ready. 

The Sixth and Second Companies, under Captain 
Nevers, are detached to lead the van. I see my 
brother Billy march off with the Sixth, into the 
dusk, half moonlight, half dawn, and hope that no 
beggar of a Secessionist will get a pat shot at him, 
by the roadside, without his getting a chance to 
let fly in return. Such little possibilities intensify 
the earnest detestation we feel for the treasons we 
come to resist and to punish. There will be some 
bitter work done, if we ever get to blows in this 
war, — this needless, reckless, brutal assault upon 
the mildest of all governments. 

Before the main body of the regiment marches, 
we learn that the " Baltic " and other transports 
came in last night with troops from New York and 
New England, enough to hold Annapolis against a 
square league of Plug Uglies. We do not go on 
without having our rear protected and our commu- 
nications open. It is strange to be compelled to 
think of these things in peaceful America. But 
we really knew little more of the country before us 



238 NEW YORK SEVENTH EEGIMENT. 

than Cortes knew of Mexico. I have since learned 
from a high official, that thirteen different messen- 
gers were despatched from Washington in the in- 
terval of anxiety while the Seventh was not forth- 
coming, and only one got through. 

At half past seven we take up our line of march, 
pass out of the charming grounds of the Academy, 
and move through the quiet, rusty, picturesque old 
town. It has a romantic dulness, — Annapolis, — 
which deserves a parting compliment. 

Although we deem ourselves a fine-looking set, 
although our belts are blanched with pipe-clay and 
our rifles shine sharp in the sun, yet the townspeo- 
ple stare at us in a dismal silence. They have al- 
ready the air of men quelled by a despotism. None 
can trust his neighbor. If he dares to be loyal, he 
must take his life into his hands. Most would be 
loyal, if they dared. But the system of society 
which has ended in this present chaos has gradu- 
ally eliminated the bravest and best men. They 
have gone in search of Freedom and Prosperity ; 
and now the bullies cow the weaker brothers. 
''There must be an end of this mean tyranny,'^ 
think the Seventh, as they march through old An- 
napolis and see how sick the town is with doubt 
and alarm. 

Outside the town, we strike the railroad and 
move along, the howitzers in front, bouncing over 
the sleepers. When our line is fully disengaged 
from the town, we halt. 

Here the scene is beautiful. The van rests up- 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 239 

on a high embankment, with a pool surrounded by 
pine-trees on the right, green fields on the left. 
Cattle are feeding quietly about. The air sings 
with birds. The chestnut-leaves sparkle. Frogs 
whistle in the warm spring morning. The regi- 
ment groups itself along the bank and the cutting. 
Several Marylanders of the half-price age — under 
twelve — come gaping up to see us harmless invad- 
ers. Each of these young gentry is armed with a 
dead spring frog, perhaps by way of tribute. And 
here — hollo ! here comes Horace Greeley in pro- 
pria persona! He marches through our groups 
with the Greeley walk, the Greeley hat on the back 
of his head, the Greeley white coat on his shoul- 
ders, his trousers much too short, and an absorbed, 
abstracted demeanor. Can it be Horace, reporting 
for himself ? No ; this is a Maryland production, 
and a little disposed to be sulky. 

A-fter a few minutes' halt, we hear the whistle of 
the engine. This machine is also an- historic char- 
acter in the war. 

Eemember it ! '' J. H. Nicholson " is its name. 
Charles Homans drives, and on either side stands a 
sentry with fixed bayonet. New spectacles for 
America ! But it is grand to know that the bayo- 
nets are to protect, not to assail. Liberty and Law. 

The train leads off". We follow, by the track. 
Presently the train returns. We pass it and trudge 
on in light marching order, carrying arms, blankets, 
haversacks, and canteens. Our knapsacks are upon 
the train. 



240 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

Fortunate for our backs that they do not have to 
bear any more burden I For the day grows sultry. 
It is one of those breezeless baking days which 
brew thunder-gusts. We march on for some four 
miles, when, coming upon the guards of the Mas- 
sachusetts Eighth, our howitzer is ordered to fall 
out and wait for the train. With a comrade of the 
Artillery, I am placed on guard over it. 

ON GUARD WITH HOWITZER NO. TWO. 

Henry Bonnell is my fellow-sentry. He, like 
myself, is an old campaigner in such campaigns as 
our generation has known. So we talk California, 
Oregon, Indian life, the Plains, keeping our eyes 
peeled meanwhile, and ranging the countiy. Men 
that will tear up track are quite capable of picking 
off a sentry. A giant chestnut gives us little dots 
of shade from its pigmy leaves. The coui*try 
about us is open and newly ploughed. Some of 
the worm-fences are new, and ten rails high ; but 
the farming is careless, and the soil thin. 

Two of the Massachusetts men come back to 
the gun while we are standing there. One is my 
friend Stephen Morris, of Marblehead, Sutton Light 
Infantry. I had shared my breakfast yesterday'- 
with Stephe. So we refraternize. 

His business is, — "I make shoes in winter and 
fishin' in summer.'' He gives me a few facts, — 
suspicious persons seen about the track, men on 
horseback in the distance. One of the Massachu- 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 241 

setts guard last night challenged his captain. 
Captain replied, '' Officer of the night/' Where- 
upon, says Stephe, " The recruit let squizzle and 
jest missed his ear." He then related to me the 
incident of the railroad station. " The first thing 
they know'd,'' says he, " we bit right into the 
depot and took charge. '^ '' I don't mind," Stephe 
remarked, — "I don't mind life, nor yit death ; but 
whenever I see a Massachusetts boy, I stick by 
him, and if them Secessionists attackt us to-night, 
or any other time, they '11 get in debt." 

Whistle, again I and the train appears. We are 
ordered to ship our howitzer on a platform car. 
The engine pushes us on. This train brings our light 
baggage and the rear guard. 

A hundred yards farther on is a delicious fresh 
spring below the bank. While the train halts, 
Stephe Morris rushes down to fill my canteen. 
'' This a'n't like Marblehead," says Stephe, panting 
up ; "but a man that can shin up tlwm rocks can 
git right over this sand." 

The train goes slowly on, as a rickety train 
should. At intervals we see the fresh spots of 
track just laid by our Yankee friends. Near the 
sixth mile, we began to overtake hot and uncom- 
fortable squads of our fellows. The unseasonable 
heat of this most breathless day was too much for 
many of the younger men, unaccustomed to rough 
work, and weakened by want of sleep and irregular 
food in our hurried movements thus far. 

Charles Homans's private carriage was, how- 
11 p 



242 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

ever, ready to pick up tired men, hot men, thirsty 
men, men with corns, or men with blisters. They 
tumbled into the train in considerable numbers. 

An enemy that dared could have made a 
moderate bag of stragglers at this time. But they 
would not have been allowed to straggle, if any 
enemy had been about. By this time we were 
convinced that no attack was to be expected in 
this part of the way. 

The main body of the regiment, under Major 
Shaler, a tall, soldierly fellow, with a moustache of 
the fighting color, tramped on their own pins to the 
watering-place, eight miles or so from Annapolis. 
There troops and train came to a halt, with the 
news that a bridge over a country road was broken 
a mile farther on. 

It had been distinctly insisted upon, in the usual 
Southern style, that we were not to be allowed to 
pass through Maryland, and that we were to be 
" welcomed to hospitable graves.'' The broken 
bridge was a capital spot for a skirmish. Why 
not look for it here ? 

We looked ; but got nothing. The rascals could 
skulk about by night, tear up rails, and hide them 
where they might be found by a man with half an 
eye, or half destroy a bridge ; but there was no 
shoot in them. They have not faith enough in 
their cause to risk their lives for it, even behind a 
tree or from one of these thickets, choice spots for 
ambush. 

So we had no battle there, but a battle of the 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 243 

elements. The volcanic heat of the morning was 
followed by a furious storm of wind and a smart 
shower. The regiment wrapped themselves in 
their blankets and took their wetting with more or 
less satisfaction. They were receiving samples of 
all the different little miseries of a campaign. 

And here let me say a word to my fellow-volun- 
teers, actual and prospective, in all the armies of 
all the States : — 

A soldier needs, besides his soldierly drill, 

I. Good Feet. 

II. A good Stomach. 

III. And after these, come the good Head and 
the good Heart. 

But Good Feet are distinctly the first thing. 
Without them you cannot get to your duty. If a 
comrade, or a horse, or a locomotive, takes you on 
its back to the field, you are useless there. And 
when the field is lost, you cannot retire, run away, 
and save your bacon. 

Good shoes and plenty of walking make good 
feet. A man who pretends to belong to an infan- 
try company ought always to keep himself in train- 
ing, so that any moment he can march twenty or 
thirty miles without feeling a pang or raising a 
blister. Was this the case with even a decimation 
of the army who rushed to defend Washington ? 
Were you so trained, my comrades of the Seventh ? 

A captain of a company, who will let his men 
march with such shoes as I have seen on the feet 
of some poor fellows in this war, ought to be gar- 



244 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

roted with shoe-strings, or at least compelled to 
play Pope and wash the feet of the whole army of 
the Apostles of Liberty. 

If you find a foot-soldier lying beat out by the 
roadside, desperate as a sea-sick man, five to one 
his heels are too high, or his soles too narrow or 
too thin, or his shoe is not made straight on the in- 
side, so that the great toe can spread into its place 
as he treads. 

I am an old walker over Alps across the water, 
and over Cordilleras, Sierras, Deserts, and Prairies 
at home ; I have done my near sixty miles a day 
without discomfort, — and speaking from large ex- 
perience, and with painful recollections of the suf- 
fering and death I have known for want of good 
feet on the march, I say to every volunteer : — 

Trust in God ; but keep your shoes easy I 



THE BRIDGE. 

When the frenzy of the brief tempest was over, 
it began to be a question, '' What to do about the 
broken bridge ? " The gap was narrow ; but even 
Charles Homans could not promise to leap the " J. 
H. Nicholson '^ over it. Who was to be our Julius 
CaBsar in bridge-building? Who but Sergeant 
Scott, Armorer of the Regiment, with my fellow- 
sentry of the morning, Bonnell, as First Assistant ? 

Scott called for a working party. There were 
plenty of handy fellows among our Engineers and 
in the Line. Tools were plenty in the Engineers' 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 245 

chest. We pushed the platform car upon which 
howitzer No. 1 was mounted down to the gap, and 
began operations. 

" I wish," says the petit caporal of the Engineer 
Company, patting his howitzer gently on the back, 
" that I could get this Putty Blower pointed at the 
enemy, while you fellows are bridge-building/' 

The inefficient destructives of Maryland had only 
half spoilt the bridge. Some of the old timbers 
could be used, — and for new ones, there was the 
forest. 

Scott and his party made a good and a quick job 
of it. Our friends of the Massachusetts Eighth 
had now come up. They lent a ready hand, as 
usual. The sun set brilliantly. By twilight there 
was a practicable bridge. The engine was de- 
spatched back to keep the road open. The two 
platform cars, freighted with our howitzers, were 
rigged with the gun-ropes for dragging along the 
rail. We passed through the files of the Massa- 
chusetts men, resting by the way, and eating by 
the fires of the evening the suppers we had in 
great part provided them ; and so begins our 
night-march. 

THE NIGHT-MARCH. 

GoTTSCHALK ! what a poetic Marclie de Nuit we 
then began to play, with our heels and toes, on the 
railroad track ! 

It was full-moonlight and the night inexpressibly 
sweet and serene. The air was cool and vivified 



246 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

by the gust and shower of the afternoon. Fresh 
spring was in every breath. Our fellows had for- 
gotten that this morning they were hot and dis- 
gusted. Every one hugged his rifle as if it were 
the arm of the Girl of his Heart, and stepped out 
gayly for the promenade. Tired or foot-sore men, 
or even lazy ones, could mount upon the two 
freight-cars we were using for artillery-wagons. 
There were stout arms enough to tow the whole. 

The scouts went ahead under First Lieutenant 
Farnham of the Second Company. We were at 
school together, — I am afraid to say how many 
years ago. He is just the same cool, dry, shrewd 
fellow he was as a boy, and a most efficient officer. 

It was an original kind of march. I suppose a 
battery of howitzers never before found itself 
mounted upon cars, ready to open fire at once and 
bang away into the offing with shrapnel or into 
the bushes with canister. Our line extended a 
half-mile along the track. It was beautiful to 
stand on the bank above a cutting, and watch the 
files strike from the shadow of a wood into a broad 
flame of moonlight, every rifle sparkling up alert 
as it came forward. A beautiful sight to see the 
barrels writing themselves upon the dimness, each 
a silver flash. 

By and by, " Halt ! '^ came, repeated along from 
the front, company after company. '' Halt ! a 
rail gone.^^ 

It was found without difficulty. The imbeciles 
who took it up probably supposed we would not 



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON. 247 

wish to wet our feet by searching for it in the dewy- 
grass of the next field. With incredible doltish- 
ness they had also left the chairs and spikes beside 
the track. Bonnell took hold, and in a few minutes 
had the rail in place and firm enough to pass the 
engine. Remember, we were not only hurrying 
on to succor Washington, but opening the only 
convenient and practicable route between it and 
the loyal States. 

A little farther on, we came to a village, — a rare 
sight in this scantily peopled region. Here Ser- 
geant Keeler, of our company, the tallest man in 
the regiment, and one of the handiest, suggested 
that we should tear up the rails at a turnout by the 
station, and so be prepared for chances. So '' Out 
crowbars I '^ was the word. We tore up and 
bagged half a dozen rails, with chairs and spikes 
complete. Here, too, some of the engineers found 
a keg of spikes. This was also bagged and loaded 
on our cars. We fought the chaps with their own 
weapons, since they would not me»et us with ours. 

These things made delay, and by and by there 
was a long halt, while the Colonel communicated, 
by orders sounded along the line, with the engine. 
Homans's drag was hard after us, bringing our 
knapsacks and traps. 

After I had admired for some time the beauty of 
our moonlit line, and listened to the orders as they 
grew or died along the distance, I began to want 
excitement. Bonnell suggested that he and I 
should scout up the road and see if any rails were 



248 NEW YOEK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

wanting. We travelled along into the quiet 
night. 

A mile ahead of the line we suddenly caught the 
gleam of a rifle-baripel. " Who goes there ? '' one 
of our own scouts challenged smartly. 

We had arrived at the nick of time. Three rails 
were up. Two of them were easily found. The 
third was discovered by beating the bush thor- 
oughly. Bonnell and I ran back for tools, and re- 
turned at full trot with crowbar and sledge on our 
shoulders. There were plenty of willing han^s to 
help, — too many, indeed, — and with the aid of a 
huge Massachusetts man we soon had the rail in 
place. 

From this time on we were constantly interrupt- 
ed. Not a half-mile passed without a rail up. 
Bonnell was always at the front laying track, and 
I am proud to say that he accepted me as aide-de- 
camp. Other fellows, unknown to me in the dark, 
gave hearty help. The Seventh showed that it 
could do something else than drill. 

At one spot, on a high embankment over stand- 
ing water, the rail was gone, sunk probably. Here 
we tried our rails brought from the turn-out. They 
were too short. We supplemented with a length 
of plank from our stores. We rolled our cars care- 
fully over. They passed safe. But Homans shook 
his head. He could not venture a locomotive on 
that frail stuff. So we lost the society of the " J. 
H. Nicholson. '^ Next day the Massachusetts com- 
mander called for some one to dive in the pool for 



OUR MARCH TO WASfflNGTON. 249 

the lost rail. Plump into the water went a little 
wiry chap and grappled the rail. " When I come 
up/' says the brave fellow afterwards to me, 
"our officer out with a twenty-dollar gold-piece 
and wanted me to take it. ' That a'n't what I 
come for/ says I. ' Take it/ says he, ' and share 
with the others.' ' That a'n't what they come for,' 
says I. But I took a big cold," the diver contin- 
ued, ''and I'm condemned hoarse yit," — which 
was the fact. 

Farther on we found a whole length of track torn 
up, on both sides, sleepers and all, and the same 
thing repeated with alternations of breaks of sin- 
gle rails. Our howitzer-ropes came into play to 
hoist and haul. We were not going to be stopped. 

But it was becoming a Noche Triste to some of 
our comrades. We had now marched some sixteen 
miles. The distance was trifling. But the men 
had been on their legs pretty much all day and 
night. Hardly any one had had any full or sub- 
stantial sleep or meal since we started from New 
York. They napped off, standing, leaning on their 
guns, dropping down in their tracks on the wet 
ground, at every halt. They were sleepy, but 
plucky. As we passed through deep cuttings, 
places, as it were, built for defence, there was a 
general desire that the tedium of the night should 
be relieved by a shindy. 

During the whole night I saw our officers mov- 
ing about the line, doing their duty vigorously, 

despite exhaustion, hunger, and sleeplessness. 
11* 



250 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

About midnight our friends of the Eighth had 
joined us, and our whole little army struggled on 
together. I jSnd that I have been rather understat- 
ing the troubles of the march. It seems impossi- 
ble that such difficulty could be encountered with- 
in twenty miles of the capital of our nation. But 
we were making a rush to put ourselves in that 
capital, and we could not proceed in the slow, sys- 
tematic way of an advancing army. We must take 
the risk and stand the suffering, whatever it was. 
So the Seventh Regiment went through its blood- 
less Noche Triste. 

MORNING. 

At last we issued from the damp woods, two 
miles below the railroad junction. Here was an 
extensive farm. Our vanguard had halted and bor- 
rowed a few rails to make fires. These were, of 
course, carefully paid for at their proprietor's own 
price. The fires were bright in the gray dawn. 
About them the whole regiment was now halted. 
The inen tumbled down to catch forty winks. 
Some, who were hungrier for food than sleep, went 
off foraging among the farm-houses. They returned 
with appetizing legends of hot breakfasts in hos- 
pitable abodes, or scanty fare given grudgingly in 
hostile ones. All meals, however, were paid for. • 

Here, as at other halts below, the country-people 
came up to talk to us. The traitors could easily 
be distinguished by their insolence disguised as 



OUR MAECH TO WASHINGTON. 251 

obsequiousness. The loyal men were still timid, 
but more hopeful at last. All were very lavish 
with the monosyllable, Sir. It was an odd coinci- 
dence, that the vanguard, halting off at a farm in 
the morning, found it deserted for the moment by 
its tenants, and protected only by an engraved 
portrait of our (former) Colonel Duryea, serenely 
smiling over the mantel-piece. 

From this point, the railroad was pretty much all 
gone. But we were warmed and refreshed by a 
nap and a bite, and besides had daylight and open 
country. 

We put our guns on their own wheels, all 
dropped into ranks as if on parade, and marched 
the last two miles to the station. We still had no 
certain information. Until we actually saw the 
train awaiting us, and the Washington companies, 
who had come down to escort us, drawn up, we 
did not know whether our Uncle Sam was still a 
resident of the capital. 

We packed into the train, and rolled away to 
Washington. 

WASHINGTON. 

We marched up to the White House, showed 
ourselves to the President, made our bow to him as 
our host, and then marched up to the Capitol, our 
grand lodgings. 

There we are now, quartered in the Representa- 
tives Chamber. 



252 NEW YORK SEVENTH REGIMENT. 

And here I must hastily end this first sketch of 
the Great Defence. May it continue to be as firm 
and faithful as it is this day ! 

I have scribbled my story with a thousand men 
stirring about nie. If any of my sentences miss 
their aim, accuse my comrades and the bewilder- 
ment of this martial crowd. For here are four or 
five thousand others on the same business as our- 
selves, and drums are beating, guns are clanking, 
companies are tramping, all the while. Our friends 
of the Eighth Massachusetts are quartered under 
the dome, and cheer us whenever we pass. 

Desks marked John Covode, John Cochran, and 
Anson Burlingame have allowed me to use them 
as I wrote. 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP 



WASHINGTOl^ AS A CAMP 



OUR BAREACKS AT THE CAPITOL. 

We marched up the hill, and when the dust 
opened there was our Big Tent ready pitched. 

It was an enormous tent, — the Sibley pattern 
modified. A simple soul in our ranks looked up 
and said, — " Tent ! canvas I I don't see it : that's 
marble I '^ Whereupon a simpler soul informed us, 
— " Boys, that 's the Capitol.'' 

And so it was the Capitol, — as glad to see the 
New York Seventh Regiment as they to see it. 
The Capitol was to be our quarters, and I was 
pleased to notice that the top of the dome had 
been left off for ventilation. 

The Seventh had had a wearisome and anxious 
progress from New York, as I have chronicled in 
the June " Atlantic." We had marched from An- 
napolis, while "rumors to right of us, rumors to 
left of us, volleyed and thundered." We had not 
expected that the attack upon us would be merely 
verbal. The truculent citizens of Maryland noti- 
fied us that we were to find every barn a Concord 
and every hedge a Lexington. Our Southern breth- 



256 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

ren at present repudiate their debts ; but we fan- 
cied they would keep their warlike promises. At 
least, everybody thought, " They will fire over our 
heads, or bang blank cartridges at us.'' Every 
nose was sniffing for the smell of powder. Vapor 
instead of valor nobody looked for. So the march 
had been on the qui vive. We were happy enough 
that it was over, and successful. 

Successful, because Mumbo Jumbo was not in- 
stalled in the White House. It is safe to call Jeff 
Davis Mumbo Jumbo now. But there is no doubt 
that the luckless man had visions of himself receiv- 
ing guests, repudiating debts, and distributing em- 
bassies in Washington, May 1, 1861. And as to 
La' Davis, there seems to be documentary evidence 
that she meant to be '' At Home " in the capital, 
bringing the first strawberries with her from Mont- 
gomery for her May-day soiree. Bah ! one does 
not like to sneer at people who have their necks in 
the halter ; but one happy result of this disturbance 
is that the disturbers have sent themselves to Cov- 
entry. The Lincoln party may be wanting in fin- 
ish. Finish comes with use. A little roughness 
of manner, the genuine simplicity of a true soul 
like Lincoln, is attractive. But what man of breed- 
ing could ever stand the type Southern Senator ? 
But let him rest in such peace as he can find ! He 
and his peers will not soon be seen where we of the 
New York Seventh were now entering. 

They gave us the Representatives Chamber for 
quarters. Without running the gantlet of caucus 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 257 

primary and election, every one of us attained that 
sacred shrine. 

In we marched, tramp, tramp. Bayonets took 
the place of buncombe. The frowzy creatures in 
ill-made dress-coats, shimmering satin waistcoats, 
and hats of the tile model, who lounge, spit, and 
vociferate there, and name themselves M. C, were 
off. Our neat uniforms and bright barrels showed 
to great advantage, compared with the usual cos- 
tumes of the usual dramatis personcE of the scene. 

It was dramatic business, our entrance there. 
The new Chamber is gorgeous, but ineffective. 
Its ceiling is flat, and panelled with transparencies. 
Each panel is the coat-of-arms of a State, painted 
on glass. I could not see that the impartial sun- 
beams, tempered by this skylight, had burned away 
the insignia of the malecontent States. Nor had 
any rampant Secessionist thought to punch any of 
the seven lost Pleiads out from that firmament with 
a long pole. Crimson and gold are the prevailing 
hues of the decorations. There is no unity and 
breadth of coloring. The desks of the members 
radiate in double files from a white marble tribune 
at the centre of the semicircle. 

In came the new actors on this scene. Our pres- 
ence here was the inevitable sequel of past events. 
We appeared with bayonets and bullets because of 
the bosh uttered on this floor ; because of the bills 

— with treasonable stump-speeches in their bellies 

— passed here ; because of the cowardice of the 
poltroons, the imbecility of the dodgers, and the 

Q 



258 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

arrogance of the bullies, who had here co-operated 
to blind and corrupt the minds of the people. 
Talk had made a miserable mess of it. The ultima 
ratio was now appealed to. 

Some of our companies were marched up-stairs 
into the galleries. The sofas were to be their beds. 
With their white cross-belts and bright breast- 
plates, they made a very picturesque body of spec- 
tators for whatever happened in the Hall, and 
never failed to applaud in the right or the wrong 
place at will. 

Most of us were bestowed in the amphitheatre. 
Each desk received its man. He was to scribble 
on it by day, and sleep under it by night. When 
the desks were all taken, the companies overflowed 
into the corners and into the lobbies. The staff 
took committee-rooms. The Colonel reigned in the 
Speaker's parlor. 

Once in, firstly, we washed. 

Such a wash merits a special paragraph. I com- 
pliment the M. C.s, our hosts, upon their water- 
privileges. How we welcomed this chief luxury 
after our march ! And thenceforth how we prized 
it ! For the clean face is an institution which re- 
quires perpetual renovation at Washington. "Con- 
stant vigilance is the price '' of neatness. When 
the sky here is not travelling earthward in rain, 
earth is mounting skyward in dust. So much dirt 
must have an immoral effect. 

After the wash we showed ourselves to the eyes 
of Washington, marching by companies, each to a 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 259 

different hotel, to dinner. This became one of the 
ceremonies of our barrack-life. We liked it. The 
Washingtonians were amused and encouraged by 
it. Three times a day, with marked punctuality, our 
lines formed and tramped down the hill to scuffle 
with awkward squads of waiters for fare more or 
less tolerable. In these little marches we encoun- 
tered by and by the other regiments, and, most sol- 
dierly of all, the Rhode Island men, in blue flannel 
blouses and bersagliere hats. But of them hereafter. 

It was a most attractive post of ours at the 
Capitol. Spring was at its freshest and fairest. 
Every day was more exquisite than its fore- 
runner. We drilled morning, noon, and evening, 
almost hourly, in the pretty square east of the 
building. Old soldiers found that they rattled 
through the manual twice as alert as ever before. 
Recruits became old soldiers in a trice. And as to 
awkward squads, men that would have been the 
veriest louts and lubbers in the piping times of 
peace now learned to toe the mark, to whisk their 
eyes right and their eyes left, to drop the buts of 
their muskets without crushing their corns, and all 
the mysteries of flank and file, — and so became 
full-fledged heroes before they knew it. 

In the rests between our drills we lay under the 
young shade on the sweet young grass, with the 
odors of snowballs and horse-chestnut blooms drift- 
ing to us with every whiff of breeze, and amused 
ourselves with watching the evolutions of our 
friends of the Massachusetts Eighth, and other less 



260 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

experienced soldiers, as they appeared upon the 
field. They too, like ourselves, were going through 
the transformations. These sturdy fellows were 
then in a rough enough chrysalis of uniform. That 
shed, they would look worthy of themselves. 

But the best of the entertainment was within the 
Capitol. Some three thousand or more of us were 
now quartered there. The Massachusetts Eighth 
were under the dome. No fear of want of air for 
them. The Massachusetts Sixth were eloquent for 
their State in the Senate Chamber. It was singu- 
larly fitting, among the many coincidences in the 
history of this regiment, that they should be there, 
tacitly avenging the assault upon Sumner and the 
attempts to bully the impregnable Wilson. 

In the recesses, caves, and crypts of the Capitol 
what other legions were bestowed I do not know. 
I daily lost myself, and sometimes when out of 
my reckoning was put on the way by sentries of 
strange corps, a Reading Light Infantry man, or 
some other. We all fraternized. There was a fine 
enthusiasm among us : not the soldierly rivalry in 
discipline that may grow up in future between men 
of different States acting together, but the brother- 
hood of ardent fellows first in the field and earnest 
in the cause. 

All our life in the Capitol was most dramatic 
and sensational. 

Before it was fairly light in the dim interior of 
the Representatives' Chamber, the reveilles of the 
different regiments came rattling through the cor- 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 261 

ridors. Every snorer's trumpet suddenly paused. 
The impressive sound of the hushed breathing of a 
thousand sleepers, marking off the fleet moments 
of the night, gave way to a most vociferous up- 
roar. The boy element is large in the Seventh 
Regiment. Its slang dictionary is peculiar and 
unabridged. As soon as we woke, the pit began 
to chaff the galleries, and the galleries the pit. 
We were allowed noise nearly ad libitum. Our 
riotous tendencies, if they existed, escaped by the 
safety-valve of the larynx. We joked, we shouted, 
we sang, we mounted the Speaker's desk and made 
speeches, — always to the point ; for if any but a 
wit ventured to give tongue, he was coughed down 
without ceremony. Let the M. C.s adopt this plan 
and silence their dunces. 

With all our jollity we preserved very tolerable 
decorum. The regiment is assez hien compose. 
Many of its privates are distinctly gentlemen of 
breeding and character. The tone is mainly good, 
and the esprit de corps high. If the Colonel should 
say, " Up, boys, and at 'em ! '^ I know that the 
Seventh would do brilliantly in the field. I speak 
now of its behavior in-doors. This certainly did it 
credit. Our thousand did the Capitol little harm 
that a corporal's guard of Biddies with mops and 
tubs could not repair in a forenoon's campaign. 

Perhaps we should have served our country 
better by a little Vandalism. The decorations of 
the Capitol have a slight flavor of the Southwest- 
ern steamboat saloon. The pictures (now, by the 



•262 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

way, carefully covered) would most of them be the 
better, if the figures were bayoneted and the back- 
grounds sabred out. Both — pictures and decora- 
tions — belong to that bygone epoch of our country 
when men shaved the moustache, dressed like par- 
sons, said "Sir," and chewed tobacco, — a transi- 
tion epoch, now become an historic blank. 

The home-correspondence of our legion of young 
heroes was illimitable. Every one had his little 
tale of active service to relate. A decimation of 
the regiment, more or less, had profited by the 
tender moment of departure to pop the question 
and to receive the dulcet "Yes.'^ These lucky 
fellows were of course writing to Dulcinea regu- 
larly, three meals of love a day. Mr. Van Wyck, 
M. C, and a brace of colleagues, were kept hard 
at work all day giving franks and saving three- 
pennies to the ardent scribes. Uncle Sam lost cer- 
tainly three thousand cents a day in^this manner. 

What crypts and dens, caves and cellars, there 
are under that great structure I And barrels of 
flour in everyone of them this month of May, 1861. 
Do civilians eat in this proportion ? Or does long 
standing in the "Position of a Soldier '^ (vide 
"Tactics" for a view of that graceful pose) in- 
crease a man's capacity for bread and beef so enor- 
mously ? 

It was infinitely picturesque in these dim vaults 
by night. Sentries were posted at every turn. 
Their guns gleamed in the gaslight. Sleepers were 
lying in their blankets wherever the stones were 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 263 

softest. Then in the guard-room the guard were 
waiting their turn. We have not had much of this 
scenery in America, and the physiognomy of vol- 
unteer military life is quite distinct from anything 
one sees in European service. The People have 
never had occasion until now to occupy their Palace 
with armed men. 

THE FOLLOWING IS THE OATH. 

We were to be sworn into the service of the 
United States the afternoon of April 26th. All the 
Seventh, raw men and ripe men, marched out into 
the sweet spring sunshine. Every fellow had whit- 
ened his belts, burnished his arms, curled his mous- 
tache, and was scowling his manliest for Uncle 
Sam's approval. 

We were drawn up by companies in the Capitol 
Square for mustering in. 

Presently before us appeared a gorgeous officer, 
in full fig. " Major McDowell ! '' somebody whis- 
pered, as we presented arms. He is a General, or 
perhaps a Field Marshal, now. Promotions come 
with a hop, skip, and jump, in these times, when 
demerit resigns and merit stands ready to step to 
the front. 

Major-Oolonel-General McDowell, in a soldierly 
voice, now called the roll, and we all answered, 
*' Here I 'Mn voices more or less soldierly. He 
entertained himself with this ceremony for an hour. 
The roll over, we were marched and formed in three 



264 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

sides of a square along the turf. Again the hand- 
some officer stepped forward, and recited to us the 
conditions of our service. " In accordance with a 
special arrangement, made with the Governor of 
New York,'' says the Major, " you are now mus- 
tered into the service of the United States, to serve 
for thirty days, unless sooner discharged " ; and 
continues he, "the oath will now be read to you 
by the magistrate." 

Hereupon a gentleman en mufti, but wearing a 
military cap with an oil-skin cover, was revealed. 
Until now he had seemed an impassive supernu- 
merary. But he was biding his time, and — with 
due respect be it said — saving his wind, and now 
in a Stentorian voice he ejaculated, — 

'' The following is the oath I " 

Fer se this remark was not comic. But there 
was something in the dignitary's manner which 
tickled the regiment. As one man the thousand 
smiled, and immediately adopted this new epigram 
among its private countersigns. 

But the good-natured smile passed away as we 
listened to the impressive oath, following its title. 

We raised our right hands, and, clause by clause, 
repeated the solemn obligation, in the name of 
God, to be faithful soldiers of our country. It was 
not quite so comprehensive as the beautiful knightly 
pledge administered by King Arthur to his com- 
rades, and transmitted to "our time by Major-General 
Tennyson of the Parnassus Division. We did not 
swear, as they did of yore, to be true lovers as 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 265 

well as loyal soldiers. Ca va sans dire in 1861, — 
particularly when you were engaged to your 
Amanda the evening before you started, as was 
the case with many a stalwart brave and many a 
mighty man of a corporal of sergeant in our ranks. 

We were thrilled and solemnized by the stately 
ceremony of the oath. This again was most 
dramatic. A grand public recognition of a duty. 
A reavowal of the fundamental belief that our 
system was worthy of the support, and our Gov- 
ernment of the confidence, of all loyal men. And 
there was danger in the middle distance of our 
view into the future, — danger of attack, or dan- 
gerous duty of advance, just enough to keep any 
trifler from feeling that his pledge was mere holiday 
business. 

So, under the cloudless blue sky, we echoed in 
unison the sentences of the oath. A little low 
murmur of rattling arms, shaken with the hearty 
utterance, made itself heard in the pauses. Then 
the band crashed in magnificently. 

We were now miserable mercenaries, serving for 
low pay and rough rations. Read the Southern 
papers and you will see us described. " Mudsills,'^ 
— that, I believe, is the technical word. By repeat- 
ing a form of words after a gentleman in a glazed 
cap and black raiment, we had suffered change 
into base assassins, the gffscouring of society, 
starving for want of employment, and willing to 
^'imbrue our coarse fists in fraternal blood'' for 
the sum of eleven dollars a month, besides hard- 
12 



266 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

tack, salt junk, and the hope of a Confederate 
States bond apiece for bounty, or free loot in the 
treasuries of Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas, 
after the war. How carefully from that day we 
watched the rise and fall of United States stocks ! 
If they should go low among the nineties, we felt 
that our eleven dollars per mensem would be im- 
perilled. 

We stayed in our palace for a week or so after 
April 26th, the day of the oath. That was the most 
original part of our duty thus far. New York 
never had so unanimous a deputation on the floor 
of the Representatives Chamber before, and never 
a more patriotic one. Take care. Gentlemen Mem- 
bers of Congress ! look to your words and your 
acts honestly and wisely in future ! don't palter 
with Liberty again ! it is not well that soldiers 
should get into the habit of thinking they are al- 
ways to unravel the snarls and cut the knots 
twisted and tied by clumsy or crafty fingers. The 
traitor States already need the main de fer, — yes, 
and without the gant de velours. Let us beware, 
and keep ourselves worthy of the boon of self- 
government, man by man ! I do not wish to hear, 
*' Order arms ! '' and " Charge bayonets !'' in the 
Capitol. But this present defence of Free Speech 
and Free Thought ends, let us hope, that danger 
forever. 

When we had been ten days iii our showy bar- 
racks wo began to quarrel with luxury. What had 
private soldiers to do with the desks of lawgivers ? 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 267 

Why should we be allowed to revel longer in the 
dining-rooms of Washington hotels, partaking the 
admirable dainties there ? 

The May sunshine, the birds, and the breezes of 
May, invited us to Camp, — the genuine thing, un- 
der canvas. Besides, Uncles Sam and Abe wanted 
our room for other company. Washington was 
filling up fast with uniforms. It seemed as if all 
the able-bodied men in the country were moving, 
on the first of May, with all their property on their 
backs, to agreeable, but dusty, lodgings on the 
Potomac. ^ 

We also made our May move. One afternoon, 
my company, the Ninth, and the Engineers, the 
Tenth, were detailed to follow Captain Viele, and 
lay out a camp on Meridian Hill. 

CAMP CAMERON. 

As we had the first choice, we got, on the whole, 
the best site for a camp. We occupj^ the villa and 
farm of Dr. Stone, two miles due north of Willard's 
Hotel. I assume that hotel as a peculiarly Ameri- 
can point of departure, and also because it is the 
hub of .Washington, — the centre of an eccentric, 
having the White House at the end of its shorter, 
and the Capitol at the end of its longer radius, — 
moral, so they say, as well as geometrical. 

Sundry dignitaries. Presidents and what not, have 
lived here in times gone by. Whoever chose the 
site ought to be kindly remembered for his good 



268 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

taste. The house stands upon the pretty terrace 
commanding the plain of Washington. From the 
upper windows we can see the Potomac opening 
southward like a lake, and between us and the 
water ambitious Washington stretching itself along 
and along, like the shackly files of an army of re- 
cruits. 

Oaks love the soil of this terrace. There are 
some noble ones on the undulations before the 
house. It may be permitted even for one who is 
supposed to think of nothing but powder and ball 
to notice one of these grand trees. Let the ivy- 
covered stem of the Big Oak of Camp Cameron 
take its place in literature I And now enough of 
scenery. The landscape will stay, but the troops 
will not. There are trees and slopes of greensward 
elsewhere, and shrubbery begins to blossom in 
these bright days of May before a thousand pretty 
homes. The tents and the tent-life are more inter- 
esting for the moment than objects which cannot 
decamp. 

The old villa serves us for head-quarters. It is a 
respectable place, not without its pretensions. 
Four granite pillars, as true grit as if the two Pres- 
idents Adams had lugged them on their shoulders 
all the way from Quincy, Mass., make a carriage- 
porch. Here is the Colonel in the big west parlor, 
the Quartermaster and Commissary in the rooms 
with sliding-doors on the east, the Hospital up- 
stairs, and so on. Other rooms, numerous as the 
cells in a monastery, serve as quarters for the 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 269 

Engineer Company. These dens are not monastic 
in aspect. The house is, of course, a Certosa, so far 
as the gentler sex are concerned ; but no anchorites 
dwell here at present. If the Seventh disdained 
everything but soldiers' fare, — which it does not, 
• — common civility would require that it should 
do violence to its disinclination for comfort and 
luxury, and consume the stores sent down by 
ardent patriots in New York. The cellars of the 
villa overflow with edibles, and in the greenhouse 
is a most appetizing array of barrels, boxes, cans, 
and bottles, shipped here that our Sybarites might 
not sigh for the flesh-pots of home. Such trash 
may do very well to amuse the palate in these 
times of half peace, half hostility ; but when 

" war, which for a space does fail, 
Shall doubly thiindering swell the gale," 

then every soldier should drop gracefully to the 
simple ration, and cease to dabble with frying-pans. 
Cooks to their aprons, and soldiers to their guns I 

Our tents are pitched on a level clover-field slop- 
ing to the front for our parade-ground. We use 
the old wall tent without a fly. It is necessary to 
live in one of these awhile, to know the vast supe- 
riority of the Sibley pattern. Sibley's tent is a 
wrinkle taken from savage life. It is the Sioux 
buffalo-skin lodge, or Tepee, improved, -*— a cone 
truncated at the top and fitted with a movable apex 
for ventilation. A single tent-pole, supported upon 
a hinged tripod of iron, sustains the structure. It 
is compacter, more commodious, healthier, and 



270 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

handsomer than the ancient models. None other 
should be used in permanent encampments. For 
marching troops, the French Tente d^abri is a capi- 
tal shelter. 

Still our fellows manage to be at home as they 
are. Some of our model tents are types of the 
best style of temporary cottages. Young house- 
keepers of limited incomes would do well to visit 
and take heed. A whole elysium of household 
comfort can be had out of a teapot, — tin ; a brace 
of cups, — tin ; a brace of plates, — tin ; and a 
fiying-pan. 

In these days of war everybody can see a camp. 
Every one who stays at home has a brother or a 
son or a lover quartered in one of the myriad tents 
that have blossomed with the daffodil-season all over 
our green fields of the North. I need not, then, 
describe our encampment in detail, — its guard- 
tent in advance, — its guns in battery j — its flag- 
staff, — its companies quartered in streets with 
droll and fanciful names, — its ofiBcers' tents in the 
rear, at right angles to the lines of company tents, 
— its kitchens, armed with Captain Viele's capital 
army cooking-stoves, — its big marquees, "The 
White House '' and " Fort Pickens,'' for the lodg- 
ing and messing of the new artillery company, — its 
barbers' ehops, — its offices. The same, more or 
less well arranged, can be seen in all the rendezvous 
where the armies are now assembling. Instead of 
such description, then, let me give the log of a 
single day at our camp. 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 271 

JOURNAL OF A DAY AT CAMP CAMERON, BY PRIVATE 
W., COMPANY I. 

Boom ! 

I would rather not believe it ; but it is — yes, it 
is — the morning gun, uttering its surly " Hullo I " 
to jBunrise. 

Yes, — and, to confirm my suspicions, here rattle 
in the drums and pipe in the fifes, wooing us to 
get up, get up, with music too peremptory to be 
harmonious. 

I rise up sur mon seant and glance about me. I, 
Private W., chance, by reason of sundry chances, 
to be a member of a company recently largely re- 
cruited and bestowed all together in a big marquee. 
As I lift myself up, I see others lift themselves up 
on those straw bags we kindly call our mattresses. 
The tallest man of the regiment. Sergeant K., is 
on one side of me. On the other side I am sep- 
arated from two of the fattest men of the regiment 
by Sergeant M., another excellent fellow, prime 
cook and prime forager. 

We are all presently on our pins, — K. on those 
lengthy continuations of his, and the two stout 
gentlemen on their stout supporters. The deep 
sleepers are pulled up from those abysses of 
slumber where they had been choking, gurgling, 
strangling, death-rattling all night. There is for a 
moment a sound of legs rushing into pantaloons 
and arms plunging into jackets. 

Then, as the drums and fifes whine and clatter 



272 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

their last notes, at the flap of our tent appears our 
orderly, and fierce in the morning sunshine gleams 
his moustache, — one month's growth this blessed 
day. " Fall in, for roll-call ! " he cries, in a ring- 
ing voice. The orderly can speak sharp, if need he. 

We obey. Not "Walk inl'^ "March in I '^ 
"Stand inl^^ is the order; but "Fall in 1 '\as 
sleepy men must. Then the orderly calls off our 
hundred. There are several boyish voices which 
reply, several comic voices, a few mean voices, 
and some so earnest and manly and alert that one 
says to himself, " Those are the men for me, when 
work is to be done* 1 '' I read the character of my 
comrades every morning in each fellow's mono- 
syllable "Here!'' 

When the orderly is satisfied that not one of us 
has run away and accepted a Colonelcy from the 
Confederate States since last roll-call, he notifies 
those unfortunates who are to be on guard for the 
next twenty-four hours of the honor and responsi- 
bility plaaed upon their shoulders. Next he tells 
us what are to be the drills of the day. Then, 
" Eight face ! Dismissed 1 Break ranks I March ! '^ 

With ardor we instantly seize tin basins, soap, 
and towels, and invade a lovely oak-grove at the 
rear and left of our camp. Here is a delicious 
spring into which we have fitted a pump. The 
sylvan scene becomes peopled with "National 
Guards Washing," — a scene meriting the notice 
of Art as much as any " Diana and her Nymphs.'' 
But we have no Poussin to paint us in the dewy 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 273 

sunlit grove. Few of us, indeed, know how pic- 
turesque we are at all times and seasons. 

After this beau ideal of a morning toilet comes 
the ante-prandial drill. Lieutenant W. arrives, and 
gives us a little appetizing exercise in '' Carry 
arms ! '' " Support arms ! '' " By the right flank, 
march ! ^^ " Double quick ! '^ 

Breakfast follows. My company messes some- 
what helter-skelter in a big tent. We have very 
tolerable rations. Sometimes luxuries appear of 
potted meats and hermetical vegetables, sent us by 
the fond New-Yorkers. Each little knot of fellows, 
too, cooks something savory. Our table-furniture 
is not elegant, our plates are tin, there is no silver 
in our forks ; but a la guerre, comme a la guerre. 
Let the scrubs growl ! Lucky fellows, if they suf- 
fer no worse hardships than this ! 

By and by, after breakfast, come company drills, 
bayonet practice, battalion drills, and the heavy 
work of the day. Our handsome Colonel, on a 
nice black nag, manoeuvres his thousand men of 
the line-companies on the parade for two or three 
hours. Two thousand legs step off accurately to- 
gether. Two thousand pipe-clayed cross-belts — 
whitened with infinite pains and waste of time, and 
offering a most inviting mark to a foe — restrain 
the beating bosoms of a thousand braves, as they — 
the braves, not the belts — go through the most 
intricate evolutions unerringly. Watching these 
battalion movements, Private W., perhaps, goes off 
and inscribes in his journal, — " Any clever, prompt 

12* R 



274 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

man, with a mechanical turn, an eye for distance, 
a notion of time, and a voice of command, can be 
a tactician. It is pure pedantry to claim that the 
manoeuvring of troops is difficult : it is not difficult, 
if the troops are quick and steady. But to be a gen- 
eral, with patience and purpose and initiative, — 
ah ! '' thinks Private W., " for that you must have 
the man of genius ; and in this war he already begins 
to appear out of Massachusetts and else where.'' 

Private W. avows without fear that about noon, 
at Camp Cameron, he takes a hearty dinner, and 
with satisfaction. Private W. has had his feasts in 
cot and chateau in Old World and New. It is the 
conviction of said private that nowhere and no- 
when has he expected his ration with more interest, 
and remembered it with more affection, than here. 

In the middle hours of the day, it is in order to 
get a pass to go to Washington, or to visit some 
of the camps, which now, in the middle of May, 
begin to form a cordon around the city. Some of 
these I may criticise before the end of this paper. 
Our capital seems arranged by nature to be pro- 
tected by fortified camps on the circuit of its hills. 
It may be made almost a Yerona, if need be. Our 
brother regiments have posts nearly as charming 
as our own, in these fair groves and on these fair 
slopes on either side of us. 

In the afternoon comes target practice, skirmish- 
ing-drill, more company- or recruit-drill, and, at 
half past five, our evening parade. Let me not for- 
get tent-inspection, at four, by the oflScer of the 
day, when our band plays deliciously. 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 215 

At evening parade all Washington appears. A 
regiment of ladies, rather indisposed to beauty, ob- 
serve us. Sometimes the Dons arrive, — Secreta- 
ries of State, of War, of Navy, — or military Dons, 
bestriding prancing steeds, but bestriding them 
as if " 't was not their habit often of an afternoon." 
All which, — the bad teeth, pallid skins, and rustic 
toilets of the fair, and the very moderate horse- 
manship of the brave, — privates, standing at ease 
in the ranks, take note of, not cynically, but as 
men of the world. 

Wondrous gymnasts are some of the Seventh, 
and after evening parade they often give exhibitions 
of their prowess to circles of admirers. Muscle 
has not gone out, nor nerve, nor activity, if these 
athletes are to be taken as the types or even as the 
leaders of the young city-bred men of our time. 
All the feats of strength and grace of the gymna- 
siums are to be seen here, and show to double 
advantage in the open air. 

Then comes sweet evening. The moon rises. 
It seems always full moon at Camp Cameron. 
Every tent becomes a little illuminated pyramid. 
Cooking-fires burn bright along the alleys. The 
boys lark, sing, shout, do all those merry things 
that make the entertainment of volunteer service. 
The gentle moon looks on, mild and amused, the 
fairest lady of all that visit us. 

At last, when the songs have been sung and the 
hundred rumors of the day discussed, at ten the 
intrusive drums and scolding fifes get together 



276 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

and stir up a concert, always premature, called 
tattoo. The Seventh Regiment begins to peel for 
bed : at all events, Private W. does ; for said W. 
takes, when he can, precious good care of his cuti- 
cle, and never yields to the lazy and unwholesome 
habit of soldiers, — sleeping in the clothes. At 
taps — half past ten — out go the lights. If they 
do not, presently comes the sentry^s peremptory 
command to put them out. Then, and until the 
dawn of another day, a cordon of snorers inside of 
a cordon of sentries surrounds our national capital. 
The outer cordon' sounds its "All 's well" ; and 
the inner cordon, slumbering, echoes it. 

And that is the history of any day at Camp 
Cameron. It is monotonous, it is not monotonous, 
it is laborious, it is lazy, it is a bore, it is a lark, it 
is half war, half peace, and totally attractive, and 
not to be dispensed with from one's experience in 
the nineteenth century. 

OUR ADVANCE INTO VIRGINIA. 

Meantime the weeks went on. May 23d arrived. 
Lovely creatures with their taper fingers had been 
brewing a flag for us. Shall I say that its red 
stripes were celestial rosy as their cheeks, its white 
stripes virgin white as their brows, its blue field 
cerulean as their eyes, and its stars scintillating as 
the beams of the said peepers ? Shall I say this ? 
If I were a poet, like Jeff Davis and each and 
every editor of each and every newspaper in our 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 277 

misbehaving States, I might say it. And involun- 
tarily I have said it. 

So the young ladies of New York — including, 
I hope, her who made my sandwiches for tlie march 
hither — had been making us a flag, as they have 
made us havelocks, pots of jelly, bundles of lint, 
flannel dressing-gowns, embroidered slippers for a 
ramy day in camp, and other necess aries, of the 
soldier's life. 

May 23d was the day we were to get this sweet 
symbol of good-will. At evening parade appeared 
General Thomas, as the agent of the ladies, the 
donors, with a neat speech on a clean sheet of 
paper. He read it with feeling ; and Private W., 
who has his sentimental moments, avows that he 
was touched by the General's earnest manner and 
patriotic words. Our Colonel responded with his 
neat speech, very apropos. The regiment then 
made its neat speech, nine cheers and a roar of 
tigers, — very brief and pointed. 

There had been a note of preparation in General 
Thomas's remarks, — a "Virginia, cave canemT' 
And before parade was dismissed, we saw our offi- 
cers holding parley with the Colonel. 

Something in the wind I As I w.as strolling off 
to see the sunset and the ladies on parade, I began 
to hear great irrepressible cheers bursting from the 
streets of the different companies. 

" Orders to be ready to march at a moment's 
notice ! " — so I learned presently from dozens of 
overjoyed fellows. "Harper's Ferry!" says one. 



278 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

" Alexandria ! ^^ shouts a second. " Richmond ! '' 
only Richmond will content a third. And some 
could hardly be satisfied short of the hope of a 
breakfast in Montgomery. 

What a happy thousand were the line-companies I 
How their suppressed ardors stirred I No want of 
fight in these lads I They may be rather luxurious 
in their habits, for camp-life. They may be a little 
impatient of restraint. They may have — as the 
type regiment of militia — the type faults of militia 
on service. But a desire to dodge a fight is not 
one of these faults. 

Every man in camp was merry, except two hun- 
dred who were grim. These were the two artillery 
companies, ordered to remain in guard of our camp. 
They swore as if Camp Cameron were Flanders. 

I by rights belonged with these malecontent and 
objurgating gentlemen ; but a chronicler has privi- 
leges, and I got leave to count myself into the 
Eighth Company, my old friend Captain Shum- 
way's. We were to move, about midnight, in 
light marching order, with one day's rations. 

It has been always full moon at our camp. This 
night was full moon at its fullest, — a night more 
perfect than all perfection, mild, dewy, refulgent. 
At one o'clock the drum beat ; we fell into ranks, 
and marched quietly off" through the shadowy trees 
of the lane, into the highway. 



WASHINGTON AS A CAI\IP. 279 

ACROSS THE LONG BRIDGE. 

I HAVE heretofore been proud of my individuality, 
and resisted, so far as one may, all the world's at- 
tempts to merge me in the mass. Inpluribus unum 
has been my motto. But whenever I march with 
the regiment, my pride is that I lose my individ- 
uality, that I am merged, that I become a part of 
a machine, a mere walking gentleman, a No. 1 or a 
No. 2, front rank or rear rank, file-leader or file- 
closer. The machine is so steady and so mighty, 
it moves with such musical cadence and such bril- 
liant show, that I enjoy it entirely as the unum and 
lose myself gladly as a pluribus. 

Night increases this fascination. The outer 
world is vague in the moonlight. Objects out of 
our ranks are lost. I see only glimmering steel 
and glittering buttons and the light-stepping forms 
of my comrades. Our array and our step connect 
us. We move as one man. A man made up of 
a thousand members and each member a man, is a 
grand creature, — particularly when you consider 
that he is self-made. And the object of this self- 
made giant, men-man, is to destroy another like 
himself, or the separate pigmy members of another 
such giant. We have failed to put ourselves — 
heads, arms, legs, and wills — together as a unit 
for any purpose so thoroughly as to snuff out a 
similar unit. Up to 1861, it seems that the busi- 
ness of war compacts men best. 

Well, the Seventh, a compact projectile, was 



280 WASHINGTON "AS A CAMP. 

now flinging itself along the road to Washington. 
Just a month ago, " in such a night as this," we 
made our first promenade through the enemy's 
country. The moon of Annapolis — why should 
we not have our ominous moon, as those other 
fellows had their sun of Austerlitz ? — the moon of 
Annapolis shone over us. No epithets are too 
fine or too complimentary for such a luminary, and 
there was no dust under her rays. 

So we pegged along to Washington and across 
Washington, — which at that point consists of 
Willard's Hotel, few other buildings being in sight. 
A hag in a nightcap reviewed us from an upper 
window as we tramped by. 

Opposite that bald block, the Washington Monu- 
ment, and opposite what was of more importance 
to us, a drove of beeves putting beef on their 
bones in the seedy grounds of the Smithsonian 
Institution, we were halted while the New Jersey 
brigade — some three thousand of them — trudged 
by, receiving the complimentary fire of our line as 
they passed. New Jersey is not so far from New 
York but that the dialects of the two can under- 
stand each other. Their respective slangs, though 
peculiar, are of the same genus. By the end of 
this war, I trust that these distinctions of locality 
will be quite annulled. 

We began to feel like an army as these thou- 
sands thronged by us. This was evidently a move- 
ment in force. We rested an hour or more by the 
road. Mounted officers galloping along down the 
lines kept up the excitement. 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 281 

At last we had the word to fall in again and 
march. It is part of the simple perfection of the 
machine, a regiment, that, though it drops to pieces 
for a rest, it comes together instantly for a start, 
and nobody is confused or delayed. We moved 
half a mile farther, and presently a broad pathway 
of reflected moonlight shone up at us from the 
Potomac. 

No orders, at this, came from the Colonel, " At- 
tention, battalion I Be sentimental ! '^ Perhaps 
privates have no right to perceive the beautiful. 
But the sections in my neighborhood murmured 
admiration. The utter serenity of the night was 
most impressive. Cool and quiet and tender the 
moon shone upon our r^nks. She does not change 
her visage, whether it be lovers or burglars or 
soldiers who use her as a lantern to their feet. 

The Long Bridge thus far has been merely a 
shabby causeway with water-ways and draws. 
Shabby, — let me here pause to say that in Virginia 
shabbiness is the grand universal law, and neatness 
the spasmodic exception, attained in rare spots, an 
ceon beyond their Old Dominion age. 

The Long Bridge has thus far been a totally un- 
historic and prosaic bridge. Eoads and bridges 
are making themselves of importance, and shining 
up into sudden renown in these times. The Long 
Bridge has done nothing hitherto except carry pas- 
sengers on its back across the Potomac. Hucksters, 
planters, dry-goods drummers, members of Con- 
gress, et ea genera omnia, have here gone and come 



282 WASHINGTON AS A CA]\IP. 

on their several mercenary errands, and, as it now 
appears, some sour little imp — the very reverse of 
a " sweet little cherub '' — took toll of every man 
as he passed, — a heavy toll, namely, every man's 
whole store of Patriotism and Loyalty. Every 
man — so it seems — who passed the Long Bridge 
was stripped of his last dollar of Amor Patrice, and 
came to Washington, or went home, with a waist- 
coat-pocket full of bogus in change. It was our 
business now to open the bridge and see it clear, 
and leave sentries along to keep it permanently free 
for Freedom. 

There is a mile of this Long Bridge. We seemed 
to occupy the whole length of it, with our files 
opened to diffuse the weight of our column. We 
were not now the tired and sleepy squad which just 
a moon ago had trudged along the railroad to the 
Annapolis Junction, looking up a Capital and a 
Government, perhaps lost. 

By the time we touched ground across the bridge, 
dawn was breaking, — a good omen for poor old 
sleepy Virginia. The moon, as bright and hand- 
some as a new twenty-dollar piece, carried herself 
straight before us, — a splendid oriflamme. 

Lucky is the private who marches with the van I 
It may be the post of more danger, but it is also 
the post of less dust. My throat, therefore, and my 
eyes and beard, wore the less Southern soil when 
we halted half a mile beyond the bridge, and let 
sunrise overtake us. 

Nothing men can do — except picnics, with la- 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 283 

dies in straw flats with feathers — is so picturesque 
as soldiering, jis soon as the Seventh halt any- 
where, or move anywhere, or camp anywhere, they 
resolve themselves into a grand tableau. Their 
own ranks should supply their own Horace Vernet. 
Our groups were never more entertaining than at 
this halt by the roadside on the Alexandria road. 
Stacks of guns make a capital framework for drap- 
ery, and red blankets dot in the lights most artis- 
tically. The fellows lined the road with their gay 
array, asleep on the rampage, on the lounge, and 
nibbling at their rations. 

By and by, when my brain had taken in as much 
of the picturesque as it could stand, it suffered the 
brief congestion known as a nap. I was suddenly 
awaked by the rattle of a horse's hoofs. Before I 
had rubbed my eyes the rider was gone. His sharp 
tidings had stayed behind him. Ellsworth was 
dead, — so he said hurriedly, and rode on. Poor 
Ellsworth ! a fellow of genius and initiative ! He 
had still so much of the boy in him, that he rattled 
forward boyishly, and so died. Si 'nionumentum 
requiris, look at his regiment. It was a brilliant 
stroke to levy it ; and if it does worthily, its young 
Colonel will not have lived in vain. 

As the morning hours passed, we learned that 
we were the rear-guard of the left wing of the army 
advancing into Virginia. The Seventh, as the best 
organized body, acted as reserve to this force. It 
did n't wish to be in the rear ; but such is the pen- 
alty of being reliable for an emergency. Fellow- 



284 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

soldier, be a scalawag, be a bashl-bazouk, be a Billy- 
Wilsoneer, if you wish to see the fun in the van ! 

When the road grew too hot for us, on account 
of the fire of sunshine in our rear, we jumped over 
the fence into the Race-Course, a big field beside 
us, and there became squatter sovereigns all day. 
I shall be a bore if I say again what a pretty fig- 
ure we cut in this military picnic, with two long 
lines of blankets draped on bayonets for parasols. 

The New Jersey brigade were meanwhile doing 
workie work on the ridge just beyond us. The 
road and railroad to Alexandria follow the general 
course of the river southward along the level. 
This ridge to be fortified is at the point where the 
highway bends from west to south. The works 
were intended to serve as an advanced tete dupont, — 
a bridge-head, with a very long neck connecting 
it with the bridge. That fine old Fabius, General 
Scott, had no idea of flinging an army out broad- 
cast into Virginia, and, in the insupposable case 
that it had turned tail, leaving it no defended pas- 
sage to run away by. 

This was my first view of a field-work in con- 
struction, — also, my first hand as a laborer at a 
field-work. I knew glacis and counterscarp on 
paper ; also, on paper, superior slope, banquette, 
and the other dirty parts of a redoubt. Here they 
were, not on paper. A slight wooden scaff*olding 
determined the shape of the simple work ; and 
when I arrived, a thousand Jerseymen were work- 
ing, not at all like Jerseymen, with picks, spades. 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 285 

and shovels, cutting into Virginia, digging into 
Virginia, shovelling up Virginia, for Virginia's 
protection against pseudo-Virginians. 

I swarmed in for a little while with our Paymas- 
ter, picked a little, spaded a little, shovelled a 
little, took a hand to my great satisfaction at 
earth-works, and for my efforts I venture to sug- 
gest that Jersey City owes me its freedom in 
a box, and Jersey State a basket of its finest 
Clicquot. 

Is my gentle reader tired of the short marches 
and frequent halts of the Seventh ? Remember, 
gentle reader, that you must be schooled by such 
alphabetical exercises to spell bigger words — skir- 
mish, battle, defeat, rout, massacre — by and by. 

Well, — to be Xenophontic, — from the Race- 
Course that evening we marched one stadium, one 
parasang, to a cedar-grove up the road. In the 
grove is a spring worthy to be called a fountain, 
and what I determined by infallible indications to 
be a lager-bier saloon. Saloon no more I War is 
no respecter of localities. Be it Arlington House, 
the seedy palace of a Virginia Don, — be it the 
humbler, but seedy, pavilion where the tired Teu- 
ton washes the dust of Washington away from his 
tonsils, — each must surrender to the bold soldier- 
boy. Exit Champagne and its goblet ; exit lager 
and its mug ; enter whiskey-and-water in a tin pot. 
Such are the horrors of civil war ! 

And now I must cut short my story, for graver 
matters press. As to the residence of the Seventh 



286 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

in the cedar-grove for two days and two nights, — 
how they endured the hardship of a bivouac on soft 
earth and the starvation of coffee sans milk, — how 
they digged manfully in the trenches by gangs all 
these two laborious days, — "with what supreme 
artistic finish their work was achieved, — how they 
chopped off their corns with axes, as they cleared 
the brushwood from the glacis, — how they blis- 
tered their hands, — how they chafed that they 
were not lunging with battailous steel at the breasts 
of the minions of the oligarchs, — how Washington, 
seeing the smoke of burning rubbish, and hearing 
dropping shots of target-practice, or of novices 
with the musket shooting each other by accident, 
— how Washington, alarmed, imagined a battle, 
and went into panic accordingly, — all this, is it 
not written in the daily papers ? 

On the evening of the 26th, the Seventh travelled 
back to Camp Cameron in a smart shower. Its ser- 
vice was over. Its month was expired. The troops 
ordered to relieve it had arrived. It had given the 
other volunteers the benefit of a month's education 
at its drills and parades. It had enriched poor 
Washington to the tune of fifty thousand dollars. 
Ah, Washington ! that we, under Providence and 
after General Butler, saved from the heel of Seces- 
sion ! Ah, Washington, why did you charge us so 
much for our milk and butter and strawberries ? 
The Seventh, then, after a month of delightful 
duty, was to be mustered out of service, and take 
new measures, if it would, to have a longer and a 
larger share in the war. 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. "287 

AKLINGTON HEIGHTS. 

I TOOK advantage of the day of rest after our 
return to have a gallop about the outposts. Ar- 
lington Heights had been the spot whence the 
alarmists threatened us daily with big thunder and 
bursting bombs. I was curious to see the region 
that had had Washington under its thumb. 

So Private W., tired of his foot-soldiering, got 
a quadruped under him, and felt like' a cavalier 
again. The horse took me along the tow-path of 
the Cumberland Canal, as far as the redoubts where 
we had worked our task. Then I turned up the 
hill, took a look at the camp of the New York 
Twenty-Fifth at the left, and rode along for Arling- 
ton House. 

Grand name ! and the domain is really quite 
grand, but ill-kept. Fine oaks make beauty with- 
out asking favors. Fine oaks and a fair view make 
all the beauty of Arlington. It seems that this old 
establishment, like many another old Virginian, 
had claimed its respectability for its antiquity, and 
failed to keep up to the level of the time. The 
road winds along through the trees, climbing to 
fairer and fairer reaches of view over the plain of 
Washington. I had not fancied that there was any 
such lovely site near the capital. But we have 
not yet appreciated what Nature has done for us 
there. When civilization once makes up its mind 
to colonize Washington, all this amphitheatre of 
hills will blossom with structures of sublimest gin- 
gerbread. 



288 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

Arlington House is the antipodes of gingerbread, 
except that it is yellow, and disposed to crumble. 
It has a pompous propylon of enormous stuccoed 
columns. Any house smaller than Blenheim would 
tail on insignificantly after such a frontispiece. 
The interior has a certain careless, romantic, de- 
cayed-gentleman effect, wholly Virginian. It was 
enlivened by the uniforms of staff-officers just now, 
and as they rode through the trees of the ap- 
proach and by the tents of the New York Eighth, 
encamped in the grove to the rear, the tableau was 
brilliantly warlike. Here, by the way, let me 
pause to ask, as a horseman, though a foot-soldier, 
why generals and other gorgeous fellows make 
such guys of their horses with trappings. If the 
horse is a screw, cover him thick with saddle- 
cloths, girths, cruppers, breast-bands, and as»much 
brass and tinsel as your pay will enable you to 
buy ; but if not a screw, let his fair proportions 
be seen as much as may be, and don't bother a 
lover of good horse-flesh to eliminate so much uni- 
form before he can see what is beneath. 

From Arlington I rode to the other encamp- 
ments, — the Sixty-Ninth, Fifth, and Twenty- 
Eighth, all of New York, — and heard their several 
stories of alarms and adventures. This completed 
the circuit of the new fortification of the Great 
Camp. Washington was now a fortress. The 
capital was out of danger, and therefore of no fur- 
ther interest to anybody. The time had come for 
myself and my regiment to leave it by different 
ways. 



WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 289 

"PARTANT POUR LA SYRIE." 

I SHOULD have been glad to stay and see my 
comrades through to their departure ; but there 
was a Massachusetts man down at Fortress Mon- 
roe, Butler by name, — has any one heard of him ? 
— and to this gentleman it chanced that I was to 
report myself. So I packed my knapsack, got my 
furlough, shook hands with my fellows, said good 
by to Camp Cameron, and was off, two days after 
our month's service was done. 

FAREWELL TO THE SEVENTH. 

Under Providence, Washington owes its safety, 
1st, To General Butler, whose genius devised the 
circumvention of Baltimore and its rascal rout, and 
whose utter bravery executed the plan ; — he is 
the Grand Yankee of this little period of the war. 
2d, To the other Most Worshipful Grand Yankees 
of the Massachusetts regiment who followed their 
leader, as he knew they would, discovered a for- 
gotten colony called Annapolis, and dashed in 
there, asking no questions. 3d, And while I glad- 
ly yield the first places to this General and his men, 
I put. the Seventh in, as last, but not least, in 
saving the capital. Character always tells. The 
Seventh, by good, hard, faithful work at drill, 
had established its fame as the most thorough mili- 
tia regiment in existence. Its military and moral 
character were excellent. The mere name of the 
13 s 



290 WASHINGTON AS A CAMP. 

regiment carried weight. It took the field as if 
the field were a ball-room. There were myriads 
eager to march ; but they had not made ready be- 
forehand. YeS; the Seventh had its important 
share in the rescue. Without our support, whether 
our leaders tendered it eagerly or hesitatingly, 
General Butler's position at Annapolis would have 
been critical, and his forced march to the capital a 
forlorn hope, — heroic, but deeperate. 

So, honor to whom honor is due. 

Here I must cut short my story. So good by 
to the Seventh, and thanks for the fascinating 
month I have passed in their society. In this 
pause of the war our camp-life has been to me 
as brilliant as a permanent picnic. 

Good by to Company I, and all the fine fellows, 
rough and smooth, cool old hands and recruits ver- 
dant but ardent I Good by to our Lieutenants, to 
whom I owe much kindness 1 Good by, the Or- 
derly, so peremptory on parade, so indulgent off I 
Good by, everybody I 

And so in haste, I close. 



FORTRESS MONROE 



FORTRESS MONROE 



[The sketches of the campaign in Virginia, which 
Winthrop had commenced in the "Atlantic Month- 
ly/' would have been continued, had he lived. 
Immediately upon his arrival at Fort Monroe he 
had commenced a third article. It is inserted here 
just as he left it, with one brief addition only to 
make his known meaning more clear. The part 
called " Voices of the Contraband " was written 
previously, and is not paged in the manuscript. It 
was to have been introduced into the article ; but 
it is placed first here, that the sequence of the 
paper, as far as the author had written it, may 
remain undisturbed.] 

VOICES OF THE CONTEABAND. 

Solvuntur risu tahuloe. An epigram abolished 
slavery in the United States. Large wisdom, stated 
in fine wit, was the decision, " Negroes are contra- 
band of war." " They are property, '^ claim the 
owners. Very well ! As General Butler takes 
contraband horses used in transport of munitions 



294 FOETKESS MONROE. 

of war, so he takes contraband black creatures who 
tote the powder to the carts and flagellate the 
steeds. As he takes a spade used in hostile earth- 
works, so he goes a little farther off and takes the 
black muscle that wields the spade. As he takes 
the rations of the foe, so he takes the sable Soyer 
whose skilful hand makes those rations savory to 
the palates and digestible by the stomachs of the 
foe, and so puts blood and nerve into them. As he 
took the steam-gun, so he now takes what might 
become the stoker of the steam part of that ma- 
chine and the aimer of its gun part. As he takes 
the musket, so he seizes the object who in the Vir- 
ginia army carries that musket on its shoulder 
until its master is ready to reach out a lazy hand, 
nonchalantly lift the piece, and carelessly pop a 
Yankee. 

[The third number of the author^s Sketches of 
the Campaign in Virginia begins here.] 

PHYSIOGNOMY OF FOETEESS MONEOE. 

The " Adelaide 'Ms a steamer plying between 
Baltimore and Norfolk. But as Norfolk has ceased 
to be a part of the United States, and is nowhere, 
the " Adelaide '' goes no farther than Fortress 
Monroe, Old Point Comfort, the chief somewhere 
of this region. A lady, no doubt Adelaide herself, 
appears in alto rilievo on the paddle-box. She has 
a short waist, long skirt sans crinoline, leg-of-mut- 



FORTRESS MONROE. 295 

ton sleeves, lofty bearing, and stands like Ariadne 
on an island of pedestal size, surrounded by two or 
more pre-Rapbaelite trees. In tbe offing comes 
or goes a steamboat, also pre-Rapbaelite ; and if 
Ariadne Adelaide's Bacchus is on board, be is out 
of sight at the bar. 

Such an Adelaide brought me in sight of Fortress 
Monroe at sunrise. May 29, 1861. The fort, though 
old enough to be full-grown, has not grown very 
tall upon the low sands of Old Point Comfort. It 
is a big house with a basement story and a garret. 
The roof is left off, and stories between basement 
and garret have never been inserted. 

But why not be technical ? For basement read 
a tier of casemates, each with a black Cyclops of a 
big gun peering out ; while above in the open air, 
with not even a parasol over their backs, lie the 
barbette guns, staring without a wink over sea and 
shore. 

In peace, with a hundred or so soldiers here and 
there, this vast enclosure might seem a solitude. 
Now it is a busy city, — a city of one idea. I 
seem to recollect that D'Israeli said somewhere 
that every great city was founded on one idea and 
existed to develop it. This city, into which we 
have improvised a population, has its idea, — a unit 
of an idea with two halves. The east half is the 
recovery of Norfolk, — the west half the occupa- 
tion of Richmond ; and the idea complete is the 
education of Virginia's unmannerly and disloyal 
sons. 



296 FOKTKESS MONROE. 

AVhy Secession did not take this great place 
when its defenders numbered a squad of officers 
and three hundred men, is mysterious. Floyd and 
his gang were treacherous enough. What was 
it ? Were they imbecile ? Were they timid ? Was 
there, till too late, a doubt whether the traitors at 
home in Virginia would sustain them in an overt 
act of such big overture as an attempt here ? 
But they lost the chance, and with it lost the key 
of Virginia, which General Butler now holds, this 
30th day of May, and will presently begin to turn 
in the lock. 

Three hundred men to guard a mile and a half of 
ramparts ! Three hundi-ed to protect some sixty- 
five broad acres within the walls 1 But the place 
was a Thermopylae, and there was a fine old Leoni- 
das at the head of its three hundred. He was 
enough to make Spartans of them. Colonel Dim- 
mick was the man, — a quiet, modest, shrewd, faith- 
ful, Christian gentleman ; and he held all Virginia 
at bay. The traitors knew, that, so long as the 
Colonel was here, these black muzzles with their 
white tompions, like a black eye with a white pu- 
pil, meant mischief. To him and his guns, flank- 
ing the approaches and ready to pile the moat full 
of Seceders, the country owes the safety of For- 
tress Monroe. 

Within the walls are sundry nice old brick houses 
for officers' barracks. The jolly bachelors live in 
the casemates and the men in long barracks, now 
not so new or so convenient as they might be. In 



FORTRESS MONROE. 297 

fact, the physiognomy of Fortress Monroe is not so 
neat, well-shorn, and elegant as a grand military 
post should be. Perhaps our Floyds, and the like, 
thought, if they kept everything in perfect order 
here, they, as Virginians, accustomed to general 
seediness, would not find themselves at home. 
But the new regime must change all this, and make 
this the biggest, the best equipped, and the model 
garrison of the country. For, of course, this must 
be strongly held for many, many years to come. 
It is idle to suppose that the dull louts we find here, 
not enlightened even enough to know that loyalty 
is the best policy, can be allowed the highest privi- 
lege of the moral, the intelligent, and the progres- 
sive, — self-government. Mind is said to march 
fast in our time ; but mind must put on steam here- 
abouts to think and act for itself, without stern 
schooling, in half a century. 

But no digressing ! I have looked far away from 
the physiognomy of the fortress. Let us turn to 
the 

PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE COUNTRY. . 

The face of this county, Elizabeth City by name, 
is as flat as a Chinaman's. I can hardly wonder 
that the people here have retrograded, or rather, 
not advanced. This dull flat would make anybody 
dull and flat. I am no longer surprised at John 
Tyler. He has had a bare blank brick house, enti- 
tled sweetly Margarita Cottage, or some such ten- 
is* 



298 FOETRESS MONROE. 

der epithet, at Hampton, a mile and a half from the 
fort. A summer in this site would make any man 
a bore. And as something has done this favor for 
His Accidency, I am willing to attribute it to the 
influence of locality. 

The country is flat ; the soil is fine sifted loam 
running to dust, as the air of England runs to fog ; 
the woods are dense and beautiful, and full of trees 
unknown to the parallel of New York ; the roads 
are miserable cart-paths ; the cattle are scalawags ; 
so are the horses, not run away ; so are the people, 
black and white, not run away ; the crops are tol- 
erable, where the invaders have not trampled them. 

Altogether the whole concern strikes me as a 
failure. Captain John Smith & Co. might as well 
have stayed at home, if this is the result of the two 
hundred and thirty years' occupation. Apparent- 
ly the colonists picked out a poor spot ; and the 
longer they stayed, the worse fist they made of it. 
Powhattan, Pocahontas, and the others without 
pantaloons and petticoats, were really more service- 
able colonists. 

The farm-houses are mostly miserably mean hab- 
itations. I don't wonder the tenants were glad to 
make our arrival the excuse for running off. Here 
are men claiming to have been worth forty thou- 
sand dollars, half in biped property, half in all 
other kinds, and they lived in dens such as a dray- 
man would have disdained and a hod-carrier only 
accepted on compulsion. 



FORTRESS MONROE. 299 

PHYSIOGNOMY OF WATER. 

Always beautiful ! the sea cannot be spoilt. Our 
fleet enlivens it greatly. Here is the flag-ship 
V' Cumberland " vis-a-vis the fort. Ofi" to the left 
are the prizes, unlucky schooners, which ought to 
be carrying pine wood to the kitchens of New York, 
and new potatoes and green peas for the wood to 
operate upon. This region, by the way, is New 
York's watermelon patch for early melons ; and if 
we do not conquer a peace here pretty soon, the 
Jersey fruit will have the market to itself. 

Besides stately flag-ships and poor little bumboat 
schooners, transports are coming and going with 
regiments or provisions for the same. Here, too, 
are old acquaintances from the bay of New York, — 
the " Yankee,'^ a lively tug, — the "Harriet Lane," 
coquettish and plucky, — the "Catiline," ready to 
reverse her name and put down conspiracy. 

On the dock are munitions of war in heaps. Vol- 
unteer armies load themselves with things they do 
not need, and forget the essentials. The unlucky 
army-quartermaster's people, accustomed to the 
slow and systematic methods of the by-gone days 
at Fortress Monroe, fume terribly over these car- 
goes. The new men and the new manners of the 
new army do not altogether suit the actual men and 
manners of the obsolete army. The old men and 
the new must recombine. What we want now is the 
vigor of fresh people to utilize the experience of 
the experts. The Silver-Gray Army needs a frisky 



300 FORTRESS MONROE. 

element interfused. On the other hand, the new 
army needs to be taught a lesson in method by the 
old ; and the two combined will make the grand 
army of civilization. 

THE FORCES. 

When I arrived, Fort Monroe and the neighbor- 
hood were occupied by two ai'mies. 

1. General Butler. 

2. About six thousand men, here and at New- 
port's News. 

Making together more than twelve thousand 
men. 

Of the first army, consisting of the General, I 
will not speak. Let his past supreme services 
speak for him, as I doubt not the future will. 

Next to the army of a man comes the army of 
men. Regulars a few, with many post officers, 
among them some very fine and efficient fellows. 
These are within the post. Also within is the 
Third Regiment of Massachusetts, under Colonel 
Wardrop, the right kind of man to have, and com- 
manding a capital regiment of three months' men, 
neatly uniformed in gray, with cocked felt hats. 

Without the fort, across the moat, and across the 
bridge connecting this peninsula of sand with the 
nearest side of the mainland, are encamped three 
New York regiments. Each is in a wheat-field, up 
to its eyes in dust. In order of precedence they 
come One, Two, and Five ; in order of personal 



FORTRESS MONROE. 301 

splendor of Mniform, they come Five, One, Two ; 
in order of exploits they are all in the same nega- 
tive position at present ; and the Second has done 
rather the most robbing of hen-roosts. 

The Fifth, Duryea's Zouaves, lighten up the 
woods brilliantly with their scarlet legs and scarlet 
head-pieces. 

[These last words were written upon the day 
that the attack in which the author fell was ar- 
ranged.] 



BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 



A FRAGMENT. 



[The author had only written two chapters of this story 
when he joined the Army. It was the last thing his hand 
was engaged upon when the call for volunteers summoneil 
him to the field. He said of it, " I am tired of writing of 
crime and wrong ; this shall be cheerful and sunshiny, if I 
can make it so." In its unfinished state it has been thought 
worthy of preservation.] 



BKIGHTLT'S ORPHAN. 



CHAPTER I 



John Brightly jumped out of bed. He filled 
his short and stout pantaloons with a pair of legs 
proportionable, and ran to the window. 

Nothing to be seen through the thick frost upon 
the panes, until he had breathed himself a round 
eye-hole bearing upon his thermometer. 

That erect little sentry had an emphatic fact 
to communicate to the scrutinizing eye of John 
Brightly. It was a very frigid fact, and made the 
eye that perceived it shiver a little. But the tem- 
perature of Brightly' s mind was perpetual summer. 
The iciest ideas admitted into his brain became 
warmed and melted by the sunny spirits there ; 
and so it was with this cold fact which the cold 
mercury fired at him through its cold glass barrel. 

'' Zero ! '' said he, " a sharp zero, Mrs. Brightly ! '' 

A pretty, delicate, anxious face, lifted itself from 
the pillow by the side of its fellow, still depressed 
in the middle and high at the sides as her husband's 
head had left it. 

" Zero ! " rejoined a voice sweet, but feeble. '' I 



30G BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 

should think by your tone that you had just seen 
the earliest bluebird. I have half a mind to go into 
a rage with you, John, for being so utterly con- 
tented." 

" When you have your first rage, Mary Brightly, 
I shall have my first discontent. But I cannot 
scold Zero when I see what a wonderful artist he 
is. Look at this window. See this magic frost- 
landscape. It is a beautiful thought that such 
exquisite fancies are always in the air waiting to 
be discovered." 

" The chill finds the latent pictures, as sorrow 
makes poets sing." 

" Well said I We each owe the other one. And 
what did you dream of last night, Mrs. Brightly ? " 

^'Nothing." 

'' Yes ; you must have dreamed of the tropics, 
and breathed out palms and vines and tree-ferns in 
your dreams." 

" As the girl in the fairy-tale dropped pearls and 
diamonds when she spoke. Perhaps I did. But 
how did you detect me ? " 

" Here they are all upon the window, just as you 
exhaled them. Here on this pane is a picture, 
crowded as a photograph of a jungle on the 
Amazon. Here are long feathery bamboos, droop- 
ing palms, stiif palms, and such a beautiful bewilder- 
ment of vines and creepers by a river sparkling in 
the sunshine. And here, hullo ! here is an alliga- 
tor done in ice, nabbing an iced boa-constrictor. 
Delicious ! Do come and see, Mary ! " 



BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 307 

" Zero forbids," said she, with a pretty shiver. 
"1 '11 see them with your eyes, John.'' 

^' Well. And while you were dreaming out this 
enchanted vision, I must have been snoring forth 
my recollections of the forests of Maine. Here 
they are on the next pane by way of pendant and 
contrast. ' This is the forest primeval.' Here 
are pines in full feather and pines without a rag 
on their poor bare branches, pines lying on the 
ground, and pines that fell half-way and were 
caught in the arms of brother pines. Pines, hem- 
locks, and the finest arbor-vitse I ever saw, all 
crusted with glittering ice and hanging over a 
mountain lake. I think I like tjiis better than the 
tropics. Do come, Mrs. Brightly." 

"Zero doubly forbids my going to a colder 
climate. But it is delightful to be here, warm and 
comfortable, and listen to your raptures." 

" Mary," said Brightly, turning to her with a 
grave and tender manner. 

*' What, John ? " 

" I find a different picture on the next pane. Do 
you remember our two dear little ones ? " 

"Do we remember them ? " she asked with tear- 
ful eyes. 

" God knows we do ! and here among these 
lovely frost-pictures I find a memorial of them. 
Shall I describe it?" 

" Yes, dear John," said she, by this time weep- 
ing abundantly. 

" I see a little promontory jutting into a great 



308 BFJGHTLY'S ORrHAN. 

river. Evergreens grow about the edges. The 
top is nearly clear. It is a graveyard, Mary. In 
one corner, under a hemlock heavy with snow, and 
within a railing, I see two simple white stones, 
such as are put over children's graves. It is 
strangely like a scene that we have looked at very 
sadly together. Shall I read the names I almost 
fancy I decipher upon the stones ? " 

*' Do, dear John," she said between her sobs. 
''AH memories of them are beautiful to me.'' 

" John, son of John and Mary Brightly, drowned 
at eight years of age, while endeavoring to rescue 
his drowning sister Mary. ' In death they were 
not divided.' " ^ 

Brightly took his wife's hand very tenderly, as 
in this grave, formal way he recalled their domestic 
tragedy. 

" We do not repine, my love," said he. 

He was a singularly sturdy, bold, energetic-look- 
ing man ; almost belligerent indeed, except that 
an expression of frank good-nature showed that, 
though warlike, he would not wage war unless on 
compulsion, and when peace was impossible. His 
face was round and ruddy, his hair light, his eyes 
dark blue, his figure of the middle height, and 
solid as if he was built to carry weight. Evi- 
dently a man to make himself heard and felt, one to 
hit hard if he hit at all. It was a shrewd and able 
face, and if it had a weakness, it was that there 
was too much frankness, too much trustfulness, 
too little reserve in it. A rough observer would 



BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 309 

hardly have suspected this burly, boyish, exuberant 
man of thirty of so much delicacy of feeling and 
tenderness as he had shown in this interview with 
his wife. 

'' We do not repine, my love, for their loss,'' he 
repeated. 

" I am sometimes very lonely, John," she hesi- 
tatingly said. " Our little Mary was growing just 
old enough to be a companion to me ; and John 
too, — I do not know which I loved best." 

" I must find you," said Brightly, in his cheerful 
tone, " a nice little maiden or a fine little fellow to 
adopt." 

" if you would ! " she exclaimed. 

" Which shall it be ?" he asked with a business 
air. He occupied himself in erasing with his 
breath the picture which had recalled their bereave- 
ment. 

As the frost vanished, the scenery without 
appeared. No very vast or very attractive view. 
Most of the respectable citizens of New York have 
similar landscape privileges. Brightly's bedroom 
window was perforated in the front of a handsome 
precipice of brown freestone. It looked down 
upon a snowy ravine, planted alternately with 
lamp-posts and ailanthus-trees ; opposite was an- 
other long precipice of brown stone, evidently 
excavated into dwellings for the better class of 
troglodytes. 

" Are you serious, John ? " asked Mrs. Brightly, 
drying her tears. 



310 BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 

" Certainly," says he. " What do I live and 
work for except that my wife shall have everything 
she wants ? '^ 

"Don^t claim to be too disinterested! I am 
sure you are dying to have me approve your 
scheme.'' 

" I think we are both growing excited about it. 
But let us come to a conclusion. Which shall it 
be, boy or girl ? " 

" Boys are so merry and noisy in a solitary 
house," said Mrs. Brightly, thinking of her son. 

" Girls are so gentle and quiet," Brightly re- 
turned. 

" But then I am so afraid boys will get riotous 
companions, and be taught to smoke pipes." 

" And girls must learn music and flirtation." 

Each parent was evidently trifling away tears. 
The loss of their children was a bitter chapter in 
their history. They dared no more than glance at 
it, for fear their childless life should seem but idle, 
aimless business. 

" We must draw lots," said Brightly, assuming 
a serio-comic air. 

Mrs. Brightly, still couchant, watched smiling, 
while he took a clothes-broom and selected two 
straws. 

" Graver matters have been decided by lot," 
said Brightly. "Draw, Mary. If you get the 
shorter straw, it 's a girl ; if the longer, a boy." 

She coquetted a little, and finally selected her 
straw. They compared them carefully. 

She had drawn a girl. 



BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 311 

"1 do hereby bind myself and mortgage my 
property/^ said Brightly, holding up his hand, as 
if he were taking a judicial oath, " to present to 
Mrs. John Brightly of the City of New York, on 
or before the 31st of December instant, one attrac- 
tive and intelligent damsel not over fourteen years 
of age ; to be by her, the said donee Brightly, 
adopted and brought up to the best of her knowl- 
edge and belief, either as daughter, step-daughter, 
companion, or handmaiden, as to the said Brightly 
may seem good. And thereto I plight thee my 
troth.'' 

Mrs. Brightly laughed at this pledge. "But 
how are you going to find her, John ? '' she ^sked. 

" 1 always find the things I look for ; unless 
they find me as soon as they know I 'm in search 
of them.'' 

*' Success will spoil you some of these days." 

'' Not if I lose what I prize success for. But 
this new child of ours shall be a new spur to me." 

" She must be an orphan, John, or she will not 
love us as much as we shall love her." 

" An orphan of course. I think I shall put an 
advertisement in the paper to this effect : — Want- 
ed to adopt. An orphan of poor but respectable 
parentage, beautiful as a cherub, clean as a new- 
laid egg, with a character of docility and deter- 
mination in equal parts ; eyes blue, voice tranquil, 
laugh electric ; one whose heart sings and heels 
dance spontaneously ; a thing of beauty willing to 
be a joy forever in the house of a prosperous 



312 BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 

banker, where she will be spoiled all day by the 
mistress and spoiled from dinner to bedtime by the 
master. No Irish, orange-girls, or rag-babies need 
apply.'' 

"It is impossible not to be in good spirits where 
you are, John," said the little wife. "How dole- 
ful I should be all day, unless you compelled me to 
begin my morning with a course of laughter ! '' 

"I don't know any better medicine," said he. 
" I take all I can get, and give all I can. Well ; 
you approve of my advertisement ? " 

"As a description of what we want, it is perfect." 

" I will pop it into the paper to-day, and to-mor- 
row morDing there will be a deadlock of dirty chil- 
dren in this street, and a deadlock of dirty parents 
up and down the cross streets, for half a dozen 
blocks, — parents and children all waiting to be 
adopted. By the way, Mary," Brightly rattled on, 
"you must plunge into Zero, and dress and give 
me my breakfast in a hurry." 

" John, when will you have made money 
enough not to be in a hurry any more ? " 

" When I have hurried through my hurries. But 
I must be early in Wall Street this morning, for 
another reason. This talk about advertisements 
reminds me that I have advertised for an ofiBce-boy, 
I dare say there are a hundred juvenile noses flat- 
tening against my windows already. It will be 
deadlock there, too, by the time I get down. I am 
afraid poor Broke will be quite bewildered out of 
his wits, if he arrives first." 



BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 313 

** Is Mr. Broke coming to dinner to-morrow ? '' 

'' Yes ; he would not miss his Christmas with us. 
The others are all coming, I suppose ? '^ 

" Every one. The two Knightly s, Uncle Furbish 
and Amelia, Dr. Letherland, and Mrs. Purview and 
her son.^' 

" And I hope you mean to have a good dinner for 
us, Mrs. Brightly.'^ 

" Certainly. Did I ever fail ? And your Christ- 
mas dinners, John, for all the poor people that 
expect them from us, are they ordered ? '' 

*' Not yet. That is another reason for me to de- 
spatch. The pick of the market will be all gone, 
if I am late. Now, then, my dear, one spasm, and 
you are up.'' 



CHAPTER II 



Of all the luxuries of town life on this globe, 
there is no luxury greater than a rattling walk 
down Broadway on a cold winter's morning. 

So John Brightly thought as he strode along on 
that day before Christmas. 

It was early, but the shops had all opened their 
eyes wide, and put on their most seductive smiles 
in honor of the season. Everything that the brain 
of man has fancied and the hands of man have con- 
trived, had taken its stand at the windows to per- 
suade passengers to stop and admire, and then to 

14 



314 BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 

enter and buy. Even the mourning shops had hid- 
den their gloomy merchandise under the counter for 
this day only, and displayed nothing but coquet- 
tish articles of half-mourning and the subdued pur- 
ples of departing grief and awakening joy. The 
toy-shop windows chuckled and grinned with jolly 
toys. The print-shops had taken down their battle- 
scenes and death-bed scenes, and, instead of blood 
and tears, nothing but comedy and sentiment was 
to be seen. The photographers exhibited their 
smuggest men and smirkiest women. Nothing 
could be gayer or brighter or more party-colored 
than the confectioners' show-cases, where, under 
bowers of cornucopias, the tempting wares were 
arrayed, as if there was somewhere in fairy-land 
a planet all pink and white and blue and yellow 
sugar from centre to pole, and this was a geo- 
logical cabinet of its specimens. 

John Brightly ran this amicable gantlet at a 
great pace, conscious of its love-taps, but proof, as 
if he were a Princess Pari Banou, to its attempts 
to arrest him. 

Only once he felt a little pang as he rattled along, 
electrified by the keen air. A sharp sunbeam, re- 
flected from a pair of skates, struck him in the eye. 
He thought of his drowned son, drowned last sum- 
mer, and for an instant fancied him skimming along 
on the ice, as the father had taught him. But 
Brightly, though greatly softened by this sorrow, 
was not a man to let it rankle in his heart and 
enfeeble him. 



BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 315 

'' I am very happy/^ said he to himself, '' that 
Mary has so easily consented to this scheme of 
mine. I have long seen that her patient grief was 
wearing her away. Now, perhaps, if I can pro- 
vide her a new object of interest and love, she 
will recover tone. Man can work ; but woman is 
in danger of brooding." 

And so, with his busy brain full of schemes for 
his wife's happiness, full of schemes for comforting 
and helping all the people he knew who needed help 
and comfort, full of schemes for bringing the great 
powers and untiring energies he was conscious 
of to bear, to ease, speed, and better the world, 
Brightly hastened down Broadway. 

The early clerks, seeing him pass, a knot an hour 
faster than they were travelling, nudged each other 
and said : '' Hallo, there 's Brightly ! Early bird ! 
No wonder he 's making his fortune quicker than 
any man in Wall Street, lucky fellow !" 

As everybody is aware, one end of Wall Street 
drowns itself in a river lately from Hellgate, the 
other end terminates in a church, and runs up a spire 
into heaven. Or it might be said that Wall Street, 
like many a man's career, begins with the sign of 
the cross up in the pure sky, tumbles down away 
from the church as fast as it can, and then rushes 
up hill and down, with Mammon on both sides of 
the way, until it suddenly finds itself plumped into 
a tide that is making full speed for Hellgate. 

That ornate and flowery plant, the spire of Trin- 
ity, with its tap-root in a graveyard and its long 



316 BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 

radicles in the vaults of a dozen banks, besides its 
spiritual office of monitor, has a temporal office of 
time-keeper to perform. It certainly keeps the 
time of Wall Street ; probably it keeps that Via 
Malays conscience also, since kept in the street it 
evidently is not. 

The clock of Trinity marked a quarter before 
nine, when Brightly could see its dial through the 
branches of the mean trees stunted by the unwhole- 
some diet they found in the churchyard. 

'' I have beat Broke this morning by fifteen min- 
utes," said he, and turned down the street. 

A block before he arrived at his corner, he saw 
that a regiment of boys had collected in answer 
to his advertisement. " Wanted immediately, an 
office-boy, by John Brightly, Wall Street,'^ — this 
notice had called out from their holes and caves 
fifty or sixty chaps of all sizes, shapes, tints, and 
toggery. 

Brightly's office was on a corner, three steps 
below the level of the street. The throng of aspi- 
rants completely blockaded the door and filled the 
sidewalk. Brightly passed around them and took 
his stand on the high steps to the first floor of the 
building. From this vantage point he could inspect 
the troop he had evoked, and reduce it to manage- 
able proportions, by mental subtractions. 

It was an amusing sight, as all crowds are, un- 
less the looker-on turns up his nose so much at 
vulgarity as to obstruct his vision. 

It was a compact little crowd, well snugged to- 



BKIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 317 

gether to keep warm. Plenty of good-natured 
hustle was going on in it. The hustle might have 
been ill-natured scuffle except for that spontaneous 
police which always keeps the peace and looks after 
fair-play in crowds that are not mobs. The brutal 
boys who would have pounded the weakly boys, and 
rendered them ineligible by black eyes and bloody 
noses, neutralized each other. Besides, emulation 
among so many could not develop into hostility. 
Every boy knew that he had only one fiftieth of 
one chance of success, and that each boy within 
reach had only a fiftieth. The natural dislike of 
competitors, subdivided into fractions with such a 
denominator, lost intensity, and expended itself in 
nudges of the elbows and shoves with the hips, in- 
stead of running down into the hands and electri- 
fying them into pugilistic fists, or filling the boots 
with the idea, kick. It is not until two or three of 
a field distance the others, and are neck and neck 
within a dozen leaps of the winning-post, that ha- 
tred begins to expand in their souls, if they are 
hateful. 

As Brightly had one boy to choose, and no time 
to spare to be philanthropic, he began to decimate 
the throng with his eye. 

First, he rejected all who disdained or neglected 
the primal use of the pocket-handkerchief. 

Second, he set aside all the irreclaimable raga- 
muffins. 

Third, he counted out those who would be con- 
stitutionally unsavory. 



318 BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 

Fourth, all who would fill their desks with pies, 
peanut-shells, and story-books to match. 

Fifth, several who would drop in nonchalantly 
at irregular hours, and regard the office only as 
an agreeable lounging-place, which their presence 
honored. 

Sixth, the sons or scholars of thieves. 

Seventh, chronic upsetters of inkstands. 

Eighth, a mean, stunted man of twenty-five, 
shaved close and disguised in jacket and turn-over 
collar, with forger and picklock in his face. 

Ninth, a boy with a pipe, a boy with a '' dorg," 
and a boy whistling as if his lungs could take 
breath only in the form of music. 

By these successive expurgations, made rapidly 
by Brightly from his post on the steps, the number 
of applicants to be noticed was reduced to five or 
six, all decent, earnest little fellows, and clustered 
near the door as if they had come early. 

One of these was seated against the door, with 
his head leaning upon the knob. For all the cold, 
he had dropped asleep in this position. His next 
neighbor was faithfully defending him from the 
pokes and pinches of the others. 

" One or t' other of that pair will probably be the 
man," thought Brightly, descending the steps and 
elbowing his way toward the basement door. 

The boys at once perceived that this gentleman, 
whom they had seen surveying them from above, 
was the advertiser. All felt a little detected. All 
made quick attempts to reform their manners and 



BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 319 

appearance. The inky boys doubled their inky 
thumbs under their fingers. The boy with a pipe 
pocketed it and bore the burn like a Spartan. Tlie 
boy with a " dorg " obscured his bandy-legged 
comrade. The whistler shut his lips hard together, 
and breathed stertorously through his nose. 

There were symptoms of a rush as Brightly un- 
locked his door. He repelled it, however, selected 
the most promising subjects for further examina- 
tion, and dismissed the others. Most of them, 
conscious of demerit, abandoned the field at once. 
A few, with feeble pertinacity, remained sitting on 
the cold steps and hoping for another chance. The 
curious ones stayed about the windows peering in 
to watch who might be the successful candidate, 
and with a view, no doubt, of learning what was 
his peculiar charm. Two or three truculent urchins 
amused themselves with shaking their fists at the 
insiders, and ferociously threatening them, if they 
were preferred. The " dorg" boy, finding that he 
was a failure in his capacity of boy, presented him- 
self as "dorg'^ merchant, and withdrew indignant 
when he learnt that dog spelt with an *'r" was 
unsalable thereabouts. 

Meantime Brightly had conducted his selection 
within, and after a question or two to each, had 
taken two of them into his inner office for closer 
examination. This was the pair who had been 
nearest the door. 

The sleeper was now wide awake, and looking 
about observingly. No face could be honester or 



•320 BRIGHTLY' S ORPHAN. 

more freckled than his. Indeed, it seems to be a 
biological fact that the very red-haired and freckled 
tend to honesty. Nature compensates them by the 
gift of Worth for the want of Beauty. The brown 
splashes arranged themselves on this little chap's 
face as if each was a little muddy puddle to water 
the roots of a future hair of his future beard, and a 
series of them fell away from the bridge of his nose 
very dark and precisely drawn, and suggesting that 
his moustache, when it came, would come there 
instead of under his uplifted nostrils. A merry, 
trusty, busy fellow he was, and .to see him was to 
like him. 

" What is your name, my lad ? '^ asked Brightly. 

" Doak, sir. Bevel Doak.'' 

"And yours," continued the banker, turning to 
the other. 

" Bozes, sir.'' 

" Bozes ? " repeated Brightly. 

" I did n't say, Bozes, sir. I said Bozes, — Bozes.'' 

" Moses ! Well, Moses what ? " 

" Dot Bozes Watt. By dabe is Shacob." 

" Moses Jacob ? " says Brightly. 

" Shacob Bozes, sir," replied the boy. 

His speech bewrayed him. His name bewrayed 
him. His nose, his ruddy brown skin, his coarse 
black hair, his beady black eyes, his glass breast- 
pin, all bewrayed him. 

" A Jew," thought Brightly, " and a shrewd one. 
A fellow with such a nose as that must open his 
way." 



BRIGIITLY'S ORPHAN. 321 

It was a droll nose. Side view or front view, 
his face seemed all nose. It was a nose well but- 
tressed. His cheeks began at the ridge of it. and 
filled up the hollows on each side so that a straight- 
edge would have touched everywhere. This fea- 
ture had absorbed the whole countenance. It was 
not large ; not a beak nor a snub, — in fact, not 
a classifiable nose ; its nostrils did not expand so 
as to promise a stereoscopic vision of its owner's 
brains. Indeed, taken per se, it was not unlike 
some other noses in Jewry or even in Christendom. 
But it refused to be taken per se. There was no 
isolating it. Every part of his face tended to nose. 
You could not say where it began, any more than 
you can say where Mount Etna begins on the land- 
ward side. 

^'Haven't I seen you before ? '^ said Brightly, 
trying to analyze the boy's chief feature as the last 
sentence has done. 

" Yes," replied Moses. " I sold you thad dub- 
brella." 

" And you propose to try a new business ? '' 

''Yes, sir. Gades is all out of fashion." 

"What are 'gades' ? " 

" I did n't say gades ; I said gades, — gades.^' 

" 0, canes ! they are out of fashion, eh ? But 
how about umbrellas ? " 

"The soft ads has put dowd the ubbrellas. Be- 
sides bed is gidding bore badly dow and does n't 
bind weddings." 

" ' Men are more manly,' — that is good news. 
14* u 



322 BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 

But if they are, I should think they would mind 
their weddings all the more/' 

" I didn't mean weddings with wives ; I meant 
weddings with wader. But adyhow, tibes is dull, 
and bein' you wanted a boy, I thought I would like 
to go into business with you/' 

The boy's perfect simplicity, perfect self-posses- 
sion, and an air of entire honesty and courage, - 
greatly amused and pleased Brightly. He saw he 
had found a character. 

" So you think you would like to go into business 
with me," he said. 

" If agreeable." 

" I cannot pay a boy much salary, you know." 

" Id is n't the zalary ; id 's the coddection." 

" You flatter me," said Brightly, his sense of 
humor more and more tickled with tfce other's 
seriousness. 

" I speag the drooth. There 's dot mady medin 
the sdreet I 'd drust. I 've sold 'em all gades ad 
dubbrellas, ad I know 'em all." 

" But you look pretty prosperous now, Moses. 
Why change ? " 

" I have to dress well od aggout of the hodels." 

He was attired to suit the hotel taste, in Chat- 
ham Street's most attractive styles. " Very neat," 
" Very chaste," and " Le bon ton," or some similar 
label, inscribed in gold on a handsome white card, 
had not long since decked each article of his 
raiment. 

*' But this bredspid," continued he, touching it. 



BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 323 

" is n't diabod, — dode think id ; it 's glass, ad the 
chaids is pitchback.'' 

Bevel Doak had been feeling his own hopes of 
employment dwindle while the pedler was stating 
his case. Poor Bevel had been greatly appalled 
by the fine jewel that glittered on the other's 
breast. What person of either sex could resist 
the gleam of that mountain of light, surrounded 
by knobs of light and secured in the flamboyant 
scarf of Mr. Bozes by a chain to the right, a 
chain to the left, and a chain aloft ? Bevel bright- 
ened greatly as the breastpin under its wearer's 
avowal began to grow dim, — the diamonds dows- 
ing their glim, and the mainstay, forestay, and bob- 
stay transmuting themselves from gold to pinch- 
beck. 

Brightly now thought it time to give the other 
the floor ; so he said, *' Well, Doak, Mr. Moses has 
told us the object of this call. How is it with 
you ? Have you a fancy, too, for changing your 
business ? " 

" I want to make a little for mother and the 
children." 

" You have no father ? '^ 

" No, sir. He was the carpenter that the other 
carpenter fell on from the top of the house in 
Trinity Place last summer." 

" I saw 'em," Moses interjected. " Both was 
sbashed." 

" I remember," said Brightly. ^ " And how many 
children are there, Bevel ? " 



324 BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 

" There 's me, sir, Bevel, — father gave us names 
out of the carpenter's trade, — and Plane and Dove ; 
— Dovetail was his name ; but we took off the tail. 
And then there 's the two girls. Five, sir, besides 
mother." 

"Are the girls named out of the carpenter's 
trade, too ? " 

" No, sir. Mary and Jelling is their names." 

" And you want to make a little money to help 
them ? " 

" If mother was n't sick and the children was n't 
hungry, I should stick to my trade," replied Bevel, 
with an independent air. " I can handle tools al- 
ready pretty well, for a boy. But times is dull, 
and ^prentices can't make money ; so last night, 
Mrs. Sassiger — " 

" I 'be aggquainded with her," says Mr. Moses. 
" She zells the faddest durkeys in the Washington 
Market." 

"That's her," rejoins Doak. " Well, Mrs. Sas- 
siger showed mother the advertisement of ' Boy 
Wanted' ; and says Mrs. Sassiger, 'Mrs. Doak, my 
e3^es was drawed to that Wanted.' 'How?' says 
mother. ' By the name, Brightly,' says Mrs. Sas- 
siger. 'A wide-awake kind of a name,' says mother. 
' What you state is correct/ says Mrs. Sassiger ; 
' but it 's suthin' else that drawed my eyes to that 
name. Do you remember the day Mr. Doak was 
fell on ? ' Mother, bein' weakly, could n't speak 
for crying, so says I, ' Yes, Mrs. Sassiger, she 
does remember it, and will remember it so long 



BEIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 325 

• 

as she ^s under the canopy/ ' Well/ says Mrs. 
Sassiger, ' the day Mr. Doak was fell on, I got 
uneasy in my mind about the ways of Providence 
in puttin' so many burdings on one family. I felt 
as if things was n^t equal, the way they ought to 
be. I don't say it was right, mind you,' says she, 
' but that feelin' had got into my head. So, to see 
that the Doaks was n't the only people in affliction 
in the world, I took the paper and read about the 
great fire and loss of life, and about twelve persons 
killed or mutilated by the explosion of the steam- 
boat Torpedo, and about the awful calamities and 
sudden deaths. By and by I come,' says she, ' to 
a teching tale how "two children of Mr. John 
Brightly, up the North River, was drowned to- 
gether, — the boy tryin' to save the girl. I cried 
a great deal over that,' says Mrs. Sassiger, 'and 
somehow it made me feel softer, and not so much 
of a rebel again' the Lord. Now, Mrs Doak,' says 
she, ' my eyes has been drawed to this call, " A boy 
wanted by John Brightly," and I motion that Bevel, 
not haviii' any payin' work to do, and writin' a 
good hand, and a hard winter comin', — I motion,' 
says Mrs. Sassiger, ' that Bevel be the first boy at 
that John Brightly 's door to-morrow morning.' 
That motion was kerried quite unanimous, and here 
I was, sir, at sunrise, and about three minutes be- 
fore Moses, — Mr. Moses. That 's a long story, 
sir," Bevel perorated, a little abashed at himself; 
''but I got going, and could n't stop." 

Brightly looked very kindly at the earnest little 



326 BRIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 

chap ; then, turning to the other, who was listen- 
ing with a critical ear, he asked : " Well, Moses, 
what do you think of Doak's application ?" 

" I reside, '' replied Moses. 

''You resign ! '' 

" I reside,'' repeated the umbrella-merchant, with 
composure. " The sbashed father is dothing. Like 
as dot by father was sbashed. The sick bother is 
dothing. By bother is dead — if I ever had ady. 
The boys can take gare of theirselves. I 've toog 
care of byself. If there was only one girl, I bight 
insist. But there 's two. How old is Bary, Bister 
DoakI'' 

" Thirteen and a half.'' ' 

"Thirdeen ad a alf. Just the age for the or- 
ridge and apple business. I could set her up by- 
self, if gapital is wanted. Id 's daggerous busi- 
ness for the borals ; but the borals of good girls 
takes gare of theirselves. I could n't reside od 
Bary's aggout. But there 's Jelling. How old is 
she ? " 

" Eight," replied Bevel. 

" Eight is just the age for the batch business ; 
ad id reguires very liddle gapidal, though the 
profids is small. Batches without sulphur is dow 
id deband. But the batch business is low and 
ibboral. I dever dew a girl in the batch business 
who got into good society, ad into the brown stode 
Wards. Jelling had better be kepd ad hobe. I 
reside id her favor." 

" What do you propose to do ? " asked Brightly, 



BEIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 327 

keeping his gravity as well as he could. " Have 
you definitely abandoned the cane and umbrella 
business ? ^' 

" I have offered all my stock to my glerk. I 
shall spegulate around generally. I can always 
bake boney. I could go into Chaddam Sdreet, into 
the ready-made line. I ^b thought to have a had- 
some taste in gents' clothing.'' 

Mr. Moses glanced at his own habiliments. They 
were, as was before suggested, somewhat more 
showy than our grave and colorless civilization ap- 
proves. His race still retains much of the Oriental 
love for what we name barbaric splendors. 

'' Or," continued he, " I could do a good thing 
id watches and chewelry. Young bed of good 
badders are always wanted to attract young la- 
dies." 

" How old are you ? " asked Brightly, all the 
while amazed and amused at the calm, precocious 
youth. 

" By barber thinks I bust be about sixteed by 
the dowd od my chid. I 'b probised a beard by 
dext winter." 

" Now, Doak," said Brightly, " what do you 
think of Jacob's resignation in your favor for Jel- 
ling's sake, subject to my approval, — for I must 
be allowed a voice in the matter ? " 

" It 's very generous, sir." 

'' It is gederous 1 " said Moses, loftily. " I abad- 
don, dot the chadce of baking by fortune, — thad is 
a drifle. I cad bake fortunes without drubble. Bud 



328 BEIGHTLY'S ORPHAN. 

social bosition is whad I abe at, ad Bister Bright- 
Ij's office-boy has a social bosition whidg all the 
ready-made id Chaddam Sdreet ad all the chewelry 
of the origidal Zhacobs caddot cobbad/' 

All these speeches of the young Jew were deliv- 
ered with entire self-possession, seriousness, and 
good-faith. 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 



" Eye to eye we look 
On knowledge, under whose command 
Is Earth and Earth's, and in whose hand 
Is Nature like an open book." 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 



We of the northern hemisphere have a geograph- 
ical belief in the Andes as an unsteady family of 
mountains in South America, — a continent where 
earthquakes shake the peaks and revolutions the 
people, where giant condors soar and swoop, where 
volcanoes hurl up orbed masses of fiery smoke by 
day and flare luridly by night, where silver may 
hang in tubers at the roots of any bush, and where 
statesmen protocol, and soldiers keep up a runa- 
way fight, for the honor and profit of administer- 
ing guano. Long ago, in the dim cycles, Incas 
watched the snowy Andes for the daily coming of 
their God, the Sun. Then the barbaric music of 
those morning oblations died away, and, except for 
Potosi, the Andes might have been quite forgotten. 
First again we hear of them as a scientific conven- 
ience. That mysterious entity, the Equator, hung, 
like a more tenacious Atlantic cable, from peak to 
peak. French savans climbed and measured it, 
and found it droll to stand at noon on their own 
shadows no bigger than dinner-plates. The world 



332 "THE HEAET OF THE ANDES." 

began to respect these mountains as pedestals for 
science ; but later, as the Himalayas went up, the 
Andes went down. Chimborazo dwindled sadly in 
public esteem when it was proved that iBLunchin- 
jinga and Gaourichanka could rest their chins upon 
its crown without tiptoeing. By and by came 
Humboldt and lifted the Andes again. He pro- 
claimed anew their marvellous wealth of vegeta- 
tion, and how they carry on their shoulders the for- 
ests and gardens of all climes. He told, also, of 
their grandeur, and invited mankind to recognize 
it. But their transcendent glory, as the triumph 
of Nature working splendid harmony out of bril- 
liant contrast, remained only a doubt and a dream, 
until Mr. Church became its interpreter to the 
Northern world. 

A great work of art is a delight and a lesson. 
A great artist owes a mighty debt to mankind for 
their labor and thought, since thought and toil be- 
gan. He must give token that he is no thankless 
heritor of the sum of human knowledge, no selfish 
or indolent possessor of man's purest ideals of 
beauty. The world is very tender, but very exact- 
ing with genius. True genius accepts its duty, 
and will not rest short of the highest truth of its 
age. A master artist works his way to the core of 
Nature, because he demands not husks nor pith, 
but kernel. The inmost spirit of beauty is not to 
be discerned by dodging about and waiting until 
the doors of her enchanted castle shall stand ajar. 
The true knight must wind the horn of challenge, 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 833 

chop down the ogre, garrote the griffon, hoist the 
portcullis with a petard, and pierce to the shrine, 
deaf to the blandishments of the sirens. Then when 
he has won his bride, the queen, he must lead her 
beauty forth for the world's wonderment, to dazzle 
and inspire. 

Recipients of the boons of Art have their duty 
co-ordinate with the artist's. Art gives a bounty 
or a pittance, as we have the will or the capacity 
to receive, — copper to the blind, silver to the 
fond, red gold to the passionate, dense light of dia- 
mond to the faithful lover. We gain from a noble 
picture according to our serenity, our pureness, 
our docility, our elevation of mind. Dolts, fools, 
and triflers do not get much from Art, unless Art 
may perchance seize the moment to illuminate them 
through and through, and pierce their pachyderms 
with thrills of indignant self-contempt and awaken- 
ing love. For divine Art has power to confound 
conceit into humility, and shame the unwashed into 
purifying their hearts. Clown Cymon saw Iphi- 
genia, and presently the clown was a gentleman. 
Even if we have a neat love for the beautiful, and 
call ourselves by the pretty, modest title of ama- 
teurs, we have a large choice of degrees of benefit. 
We may see the first picture of our cycle, and re- 
ceive a butterfly pleasure, a sniff of half-sensual 
emotion ; or we may transmute our butterfly into a 
bird of paradise, may educate our slight pleasure 
into a permanent joy, and sweetly discipline our 
passion of the finer senses into a love and a wor- 



334 "THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

ship. We can be vulgar admirers of novelty with 
no pains, or refined lovers of the beautiful with 
moderate pains. Let no one be diffident. Eyes 
are twice as numerous as men ; and if we look we 
must see, unless we are timid and blink. We must 
outgrow childish fancies, — we must banish to the 
garret our pre-Praxitelite clay-josses, and dismiss 
our pre-Giottesque ligneous daubs to the flames. 
We may safely let ourselves grow, and never fear 
overgrowth. Why should not men become too 
large for " creeds outworn " I 

''The Heart of the Andes" demands far more 
than a vague confidence that we can safely admire 
without committing ourselves. It is not enough 
to look awhile and like a little, and evade discrimi- 
nation with easy commonplaces. Here is a strange 
picture evidently believing itself to be good ; if 
not so, it must be elaborately bad, and should be 
massacred. If good and great, let it have the 
crown of unfading bays ; but the world cannot 
toss its laurels lightly about to bristle on every 
ambitious pate. If we want noble pictures and 
progress to nobler, let us recognize them heartily 
when they come. An artist feels the warmth of 
intelligent sympathy, as a peach feels sunshine. 
The applause of a mob has a noisy charm, like the 
flapping of wings in an army of wild-pigeons, but 
the tidal sympathy of a throng of brother men 
stirs the life-blood. When a man of genius asks 
if he speak the truth, and the world responds with 
a magnificent "Ay!'' thenceforth his impulses 



" THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 335 

move with the momentum of mankind. Apprecia- 
tion is the cause and the consequence of excel- 
lence. 

As a contribution toward the understanding of 
Mr. Church's great work, I propose in the follow- 
ing pages to analyze its subject and manner of 
treatment. I shall eschew technicality of thought 
and phrase. The subject is new, the scenes are 
strange, the facts are amazing. People in the 
United States are familiar with solemn pine woods 
and jocund plains and valleys, and have studied the 
bridal-cottage picturesque everywhere ; but Cordil- 
leras, and the calm of uppermost peaks of snow, and 
the wealth of tropic forests, they know not. Some 
commentary, then, on this novel work, seems not 
impertinent. I am obliged to execute my task in 
the few last days while the picture ripens rapidly 
under the final brilliant touches of its creator ; and 
the necessity of haste must be my excuse for any 
roughness of style or opacity of condensation. 
- Before proceeding to the direct analysis, let us 
notice the strength of our position as American 
thinkers on Art. Generally with the boons of the 
past we have to accept the burdens of the past. 
But only a withered incubus, moribund with an 
atrophy, squats upon our healthy growth in Art. 
We may have much to learn, but we have little to 
unlearn. Young artists, errant with Nature, are 
not caught and cuffed by the despotism of effete 
schools, nor sneered down into inanity by conserv- 
ative dilettantism. Superstition for the past is 



336. "THE HEAET OF THE ANDES." 

feeble here, to-day. We might tend to irreverence, 
but irreverence is soon scourged out of every sin- 
cere life. We have a nearly clear field for Art, and 
no rubbish to be burned. Europe has been wretch- 
edly impeded and futilized in Art by worshipping 
men rather than God, finite works rather than infi- 
nite Nature, and is now at pains to raze and recon- 
struct its theories. Our business is simpler, and 
this picture is a token of inevitable success, -^ a 
proof and a promise, a lesson and a standard. The 
American landscape-artist marches at Nature with 
immense civilization to back him. The trophies of 
old triumph are not disdained, but they are behind 
him. He is not compelled to serve apprenticeship 
in the world's garrets of trash for inspiration, 
nor to kotou to any fetish, whether set up on 
the Acropolis, or the Capitoline, in the Court of 
the Louvre, or under the pepper-boxes in Trafalgar 
Square. 

No lover of Art should be bullied out of his 
faith in his own instincts and independent culture 
by impertinencies about old masters and antique 
schools. Eemember that Nature is the mistress of 
all masters, and founder of all schools. Nature 
makes Art possible straightway, everywhere, al- 
ways. 

Habits of mind are in every man's power which 
will make him an infallible judge of artistic excel- 
lence at once. Does some one ask how to form 
those habits for comprehending landscape Art ? 
If we are pure lovers of the world of God ; if we 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 337 

have recognized the palpitating infinite of blue sky, 
and loved to name it Heaven ; if we have been 
thrilled with the solemnity of violet dawn, and are 
rich with remembered pageantries of sunrise, and 
have known the calm and the promise of twilight 
glories over twilight glooms, and have chosen 
clouds to be the companions of our brightest earth- 
ly fancies ; if we have studied the modesty, the 
stateliness, and the delicate fiery quietness of the 
world of flowers, and have been showered with 
sunbeams and shadows in the tremulous woods ; 
if we have watched where surges come, with a 
gleam on their crest, to be lavish of light and 
music on glittering. crags ; if, with the simple man- 
ly singer of old Greece, we deem ''water best," — 
best for its majesty in Ocean, best in the brave 
dashes and massy plunge of a waterfall, best in 
every shady dingle where it drifts dimples full of 
sweet sunlight, and best in twinkling dew-drops on 
a lily tossed into showers of sparkles by a hum- 
ming-bird ; if we have felt the large grandeur of 
plains sweeping up to sudden lifts of mountain, and 
if mountains have taught us their power and ener- 
gy, and the topmost snow-peaks their transcendent 
holy calm ; if we have loved and studied Nature 
thus, and kept our hearts undebased by sense and 
unbewildered by mammon, — then it^s to us that 
noblest Art appeals, and we are its scholars and its 
tribunal. Then we have no mundane errors to re- 
cant, and will not keep up a shabby scufile with our 
convictions, and chuckle punily over some pinch- 
15 y 



338 " THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

beck treasure-trove of our conceit, some minor 
fault in a noble work ; but, finding that a bold lover 
has gone nearer to Nature than we, will choose 
him for our guide, and follow straight in his track 
to the penetralia of beauty. 

There are two questions to be asked regarding 
" The Heart of the Andes." 1. Is it a subject fit 
to be painted ? 2. Is it well done ? Genius should 
not choose for itf theme, The Model Frog-Pond, 
and revel there in the clammy ooze. And if Genius 
paints the Portals of Paradise, they must not be 
rusty, repulsive, and baleful as the Infernal doors. 
This picture is a new-comer of imposing port 
When a supernatural guest enters, the first ques- 
tion is, — ''Ho, the Great Unknown I Art thou 
Archangel, or Ogre, or overgrown Scarecrow ? " 
Which of these personages have we here ? 

" Why paint the Andes ? '^ says anybody. "Are 
not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better 
than all the waters of Israel ? Why go among the 
condors and centipedes for beauty ? Cannot Mr. 
Church stay at home and paint Niagaras ? Or the 
White Mountains, — they are a mile high ? " 

Why paint the tropics ? Every passionate soul 
longs to be with Nature in her fervor underneath 
the palms. Must we know the torrid zone only 
through travelled bananas, plucked too soon and 
pithy ? or by bottled anacondas ? or by the tarry- 
flavored slang of forecastle-bred paroquets ? Rosy 
summer dwells fair and winning beyond our North- 
ern wastes, where winter has been and will be, and 



" THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 339 

we sigh for days of basking in perpetual sunshine. 
"Warmth is the cheer, and sunshine the charm of 
Nature. Without warmth, we become Esquimaux 
nibbling at a tallow dip. Without sunshine, color 
fades away into Arctic pallors. All the blush and 
bloom and winy ripeness of earthly beauty are the 
gifts of sunshine. Upon the tropics those gifts are 
poured out most lavishly. 

For some years past, Mr. Church has been help- 
ing us to a complete knowledge of the exciting 
and yet indolent beauty of the tropics. He has 
learned the passion of those Southern climes, while 
he has not unlearned the energy of his own. He 
has painted the dreamy haste of the Magdalen a, 
the cataract of Tequendama, temperate uplands 
where spring abides forever, and scene after scene 
of sunny noon and tender evening, with river and 
plain watched by distant snow-peaks. He has 
given us already other noble smaller pictures of 
the Andes, prototypes of the present work. 

Men of science have sighed over their bewilder- 
ment in tropic zones, where every novelty of vege- 
tation is a phenomenon. Botanists sit there among 
the ruins of their burst herbariums, and bewail the 
lack of polysyllabic misnomers for beautiful stran- 
gers in the world of flowers. But Art should sing 
paeans, when it discovers the poetry of form and 
color entangled among those labyrinths, and has- 
ten to be its interpreter to the world. Mr. Church 
has attempted to fulfil this duty already, and has 
painted rich forests by rivers near the sea, where 



340 " THE HEAET OF THE ANDES." 

files of graceful cocoa-palms stand above the leggy- 
mangroves, — luxuriant copses where the crimson 
orchis glows among inland palms, — pulpy-leaved 
trees all abloom with purple flowers, — delicate 
mimosas, — ceibas like mounds of verdure, — bow- 
ers of morning-glories, so dense that humming- 
birds cannot enter, and glades where lianas hang 
their cables and cords, bearing festoons of large 
leaves and blossoms with tropic blood shining 
through their veins. He has happily avoided any 
feeling of the rank and poisonous. No one calls 
for quinine after seeing his pictures, or has night- 
mares filled with caymans and vampires. 

So much for the tropical lowlands. " The Heart 
of the Andes'^ takes us to the tropical highlands. 
It claims to convey the sentiment of the grandest 
scenery on the globe. Through a mighty rift of 
the South American continent parallel with the 
Pacific, the Andes have boiled up and crystallized. 
Under the equator, this Titanic upheaval was 
mightiest. According to some cosmical law, pow- 
er worked most vigorously where beauty could 
afterward decorate most lovingly. Here narrow 
upright belts of climate are substituted for the 
breadths of zone after zone from torrid to frozen 
regions. All the garden wealth of the tropics, all 
the domestic charm of Northern plain and field and 
grove, dashed with a richer splendor than their 
own, are here combined and grouped at the base 
and along the flanks of bulky ranges topped with 
snow and fire. Polar scenes are here colonized 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 341 

under the hot equator. Eternal snows climb out of 
eternal summer. The eye may catch a beam from 
the scarlet orchis, child of fiery climes, and glance 
before that rosy light is lost to the solemn white 
dome of Chimborazo. We can look at the North 
Pole through the crest of a palm, and cool the fire 
in our brain by the vision of a frostier than the 
"frosty Caucasus.'' Symbols of passion and of 
peace face each other. We can see at once what 
the world is worth. What Nature has deemed 
man fit to receive, is here bestowed in one largess. 
All earth's riches are compacted into one many- 
sided crystal. 

In " The Heart of the Andes," Mr. Church has 
condensed the condensation of Nature. It is not 
an actual scene, but the subtle essence of many 
scenes combined into a tj^pical picture. A man of 
genius, painter, poet, organizer in any domain of 
thought, works with larger joy and impulse when 
he obeys his creative imagination. Life is too 
short for descriptive painting ; we want dramatic 
painting. We want to know from a master what 
are the essentials, the compact, capital, memorable 
facts which he has had eyes to see and heart to 
understand in Nature. We should have asked of 
Mr. Church, after the elaborate studies of his two 
visits among the Andes, to give us what he has 
given here, — the vital spirit of these new glorious 
regions, so that their beauty could become a part 
of our minds, and all our future conceptions be 
larger and richer for this new possession. 



342 "THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

The first question, tlien, as to tlie subject of this 
picture, is answered. The theme is worthy to be 
treated. Let us proceed, secondly, to the special 
analysis. 

The picture may be roughly divided into diiicr- 
ent regions, as follows : — 

The Sky. 

The Snow Dome. 

The Llano, or central plain. 

The Cordillera. 

The Clouds, their shadows and the atmosphere. 

The Hamlet. 

The Montaiia, or central forest. 

The Cataract and its Basin. 

The Glade on the right foreground. 

The Road' and left foreground. 

Each of these regions I will take up in order. 

The Scene is an elevated valley in the Andes, six 
thousand feet above the sea ; the Time, an hour or 
two before sunset. 

The artist might have chosen an enthusiastic 
moment of dawn, when peaks of snow over purple 
shoulders of porphyry confront the coming day. 
Or he might have exhibited a sunset pageant with 
marshalling of fiery clouds. Handled with his 
ability of color, such would have been electrifying 
effects of power in passionate action. But this 
picture is to teach the rnajesty of Power in Repose. 
The day's labor is over. High noon is long past, 
but " gray-hooded even " not yet come. There is 
rich accumulation of sunshine, and withal an un- 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 343 

dertone of pensive shadow answering to that Con- 
sciousness of past and possible sorrow which so 
deepens every present joy. In a previous great 
picture, " The Andes of Ecuador/' painted after 
Mr. Church's first visit, he has depicted the glory 
of sunset flooding a broad wild valley. There the 
sun is master, and its atmosphere almost dazzles 
us away from simple study of the mountain forms. 
In " The Heart of the Andes '' the great snow-peak 
is master, and its solemn, peaceful light the illumi- 
nator of the scene. Any land can see the sun occa- 
sionally, but any land cannot see dome mountains 
of snow. Therefore let the sun retire from this 
picture, and stand, as we do, spectator ; and let us 
have that moment of day when light is strong and 
quiet, and shadows deep but not despotic. 

The blue sky is the first region of the picture for 
our study. Unless a landscape conveys a feeling 
of the infinite, it is not good for immortals. This 
sky is no brazen canopy, no lustrous burnished 
screen, no opaque turquoise surface. It is pure, 
penetrable, lucent in every tremulous atom of its 
substance, and as the eye pierces its depths, it feels 
the same vital quiver thrilling through a boundless 
calm. Without an atmosphere of joy, earthly tri- 
umphs and splendid successes are naught. As ful- 
ly is pure sky a necessary condition of delight in 
the glories of Nature. Could that divine presence 
of the snow-peak dwell in regions less clear and 
radiant than those we are viewing ? Blue sky 
melting into a warmer glow overhangs, surrounds. 



844 "THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

tenderly enfolds, and rests upon the mountain's 
golden crown and silvery-shadowed heights. No 
blank wall thrusts us back as we seek an egress 
from the picture, but blue sky clinging "and closing 
about our way leads us on, sphere after sphere into 
the infinite. 

A few motionless cirri lie like wreaths o£ foam 
flung together by meeting ripples on this aerial 
ocean. Pellucid creatures of air are they, dwelling 
In mid ether from which they came and into which 
they will presently be transfigured after moments of 
brilliant incarnation. They seem emanations from 
the mountain, a film of its own substance, light 
snow-drifts whirled up into the blue. Their spirit- 
ual flakes lift the peak and intensify the hue of the 
sky. Their white upon the azure is as delicate as 
the mingling of erect white blossoms and violet- 
blue wreaths of flowers in the right-hand fore- 
ground, which in fact recalls and is a memorial of 
them. Of the other clouds I will speak as I come 
to their proper aerial region in the picture. 

Next let our thoughts come down from these 
supernal regions, and pause "new-lighted on a 
heaven-kissing hill.'' A man becomes exalted to a 
demigod, more nobly divine than any of the Olym- 
pians, when he can soar to such a summit as this. 
An isolated snow-peak is the sublimest of material 
objects, and worthiest of daring Art, if Art but 
dare. Here it has dared and done. 

This mountain is a type, not a portrait. If the 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 345 

reader insists upon a namQ, he may call it Cayambe, 
and fancy he sees the ghost of La Condamine step- 
ping off an arc of the Equator on its shoulders, 
and blowing his icy fingers as he parts the snow to 
find the line. But Cayambe perhaps does its share 
in carrying the girdle of the world. It has been 
useful enough in a scientific way, and need not take 
the artistic responsibility of resembling this pic- 
tured peak. Besides, compared to this, Cayambe 
is but a stunted hillock, being only some nineteen 
thousand feet high. The snow line of the equato- 
rial Andes is at sixteen thousand feet, and Cayam- 
be's three thousand feet of snow would be but a 
narrow belt on this mountain's breadth of golden 
fields of winter. Chimborazo then ! — clarum et 
venerabile nomen — is it Chimborazo? Alas those 
revolutionary South American republics ! — they 
have allowed El Chimborazo to be dethroned. 
Once he was chieftain of the long line from Tierra 
del Fuego to Arctic ice. Then fickle men revolted 
and set up two temporary bullies, a doubtful duum- 
virate, Sorato and Illimani. Finally, some uneasy 
radical rummaged out Aconcagua from modest re- 
tirement in the Chilian Andes, and pronounced his 
ermine to be broadest, unless his brother Tupun- 
gato should pretend to rival him. This mountain, 
dominant at the " Heart of the x\ndes,'' is not then 
Cayambe or Chimborazo, or any other peak of the 
equatorial group. It is each and all of them, and 
more than any. It is the type of the great trachy- 
tic domes of the Andes, which stand in such solemn 

15* 



346 " THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

repose beside the fiery vigor of volcanic cones like 
Cotopaxi, and the terrible ghastly ruin of a gulf of 
burning craters like Sangay. 

And now, lei; us dally no more with questions, 
but look and wonder before the supreme object of 
the picture, — this miracle of vastness, and peace, 
and beauty, not merely white snow against blue 
sky, but Light against Heaven. No poetry of 
words can fitly paint its symmetry, its stateliness, 
the power of its rising slowly and strongly, from 
chasm and cloud, up with pearlj^ shadows and co- 
ruscating lights, np with golden sunshine upon its 
crown, up into the empyrean. The poetry is be- 
fore our eyes. A look can read it. For this is 
what great Art alone can do, and triumphs in 
doing. It gives a vision of glory, and every one 
who beholds it is a poet. 

But we can study the architecture of this firm 
fabric. Consider on what a base it stands, — what 
buttresses it has. No threatening crag is this that 
may be sapped. Here toppling ruin will never be- 
fall. We are safe in our Paradise at the Heart of 
the Andes. 

Observe the method of its growth. First, across 
and closing the purple glen to the left, rises a 
rosy purple mountain, as it were an experiment 
of form toward the grander edifice. A few spots 
of snow rest among its tyro domes and pinnacles. 
It is not, then, a petty structure. The snow tells 
us that, if it stood where stands the shadowy 
mountain of the middle background, it would rise 
far above that cloud-compelling height. 



" THE HEAET OF THE ANDES." 347 

Behind this disrobed model of the grander forms 
above, rises another experimental mountain, climb- 
ing up to the regions where snow gives roundness 
and softness to anatomical lines of rock. It leans 
upon the dome, and bears it up with stalwart 
breadth of shoulder. Separated from its younger 
brother by profound ravines, it grows up a mighty 
concave mass, a slow, majestic upward surge, with 
a sweep, and sway, and climb in every portion of 
its substance and its surface, and yet so broken by 
insurgent crests of cliff, paly purple over opales- 
cent shadows, and so varied by slopes of snow, 
and wreath, and drift, and dimple, and bend, and 
rounded angle everywhere, that there is no monot- 
ony in its solemn curve towards the dome. Faint 
shadows of clouds dim its lustre. It has not yet 
attained to the uppermost cloudlessness. A deli- 
cate drapery of blue mistiness over its swelling 
reaches is rendered with masterly refinement. 

Two essays have thus been made in mountain 
building, and two degrees of elevation overcome. 
Now the vigor of the first purple cliffs, and the 
broad sweep of the snowy shoulder, are combined 
in the Dome. Suddenly, across its chasm of isola- 
tion, the Dome mounts upward, and marks its firm 
outlines against the sky. Its convex lines of as- 
cent are bold as the lines of the first model, while 
its calm, rounded summit repeats the deliberate 
curves of the snow-clad terrace beneath. There is 
no insubordination among the parts, nothing care- 
less or temporary in the work. Skill and plan have 



348 " THE HEAKT OF THE ANDES." 

built up a mass, harmonious, steadfast, and ada- 
mantine. This is a firm head upon firm shoulders, 
whatever else may crumble in a century, and fall to 
ruin in an seon. Cities of men may sink through 
the clefts of an earthquake, but this mountain is 
set up to be a symbol of power for the world's life. 
Observe further the efiect of orderly vastness 
given by the nearly parallel lines of the ridges up- 
holding the Dome. The uppermost of these is a 
complete system of mutually sustaining buttresses. 
Up from crag to crag of this ridge, the eye climbs 
easily ; dashing up the shady purple precipices, 
resting in each gray shadow, speeding across the 
snowy levels, leaping crevice, and pausing at each 
fair dimple until it has measured its way up to the 
specular summit. If colossal peaks rose, naked- 
rock, against the sky, their gloom would be over- 
powering. And if fiends had the making of worlds, 
mountains would be dreadful bulks of black por- 
phyry, the flame-born rock, — monuments and por- 
tents of malignity. Cyclops and gnomes, to say 
nothing of more demoniac craftsmen, would never 
have capped their domes and pyramids with light- 
some snow. But mountains, the most signal of 
earthly facts, are transfigured from gloom to glory 
by the gentlest creature of all that float and fall, — 
the snow-flake. It is not enough that air should 
lie in clouds, and float in mists, and linger in violet 
haze in every dell of the lower mountains, but there 
must be a grander beauty than bare mountains, rich 
with play of strong color, and softened with shad- 



" THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 319 

ow, can express. High above the strength of his 
earth God has set the beauty of his earth, — glory 
of snow above the might of adamant. 

When the observer estimates that the Dome is at 
least sixty miles from his point of view, he will be 
able to measure the power of its mass and the pro- 
portions of its details. Each sunny dimple thus 
expands to an abyss. Seeming ripples on the 
snow-fields become enormous mounds heaped up 
by the whirlwinds that riot forever among those 
dry, unfathomable drifts, the accumulation of ages. 
Below the first sheer slope on the front of the sum- 
mit is a chasm between the precipice and a bare 
elbow of rock, — a lovely spot of pearly shadow. 
Measure that chasm with the eye ; — into it you 
might toss Ossa and see it flounder through the 
snow and drown \ and Pelion upon Ossa would only 
protrude a patch of its dishevelled poll. Things 
are done in the large among the Andes. 

Clouds close the view on each slope of the 
Dome ; on the left touched with orange, where 
they reflect the glow of the peak ; on the right 
gray and shadowy. They half disclose and half 
conceal a mysterious infinite on either side. An 
isolated silvery aiguille juts out of this obscure, a 
contrast in its color and keen form to the Dome, 
and hinting at successions of unseen peaks beyond. 
A slender stratus cloud comes in with subtle effect 
across the vapors below the summit, — a quiet level 
for the eye, where all the lines are curved and tend- 
ing upward. 



350 " THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

The Dome is the Alpha and the Omega of the 
picture, — first to take tlie eye as the principal 
light, and the last object of recurring thought when 
study proves that all the wealth below lies tribute 
at its feet, and every minor light only recalls its 
mild benignancy. 

It is hard to put the essence of a volume into a 
few paragraphs. This mountain is a marvel, and 
merits silent study of hours ; I have endeavored to 
point out briefly its great qualities of construction. 
The reader must remember that the beauty of 
snowy mountains is a recent discovery. An age 
ago, poets had nothing to say of them but a shiver, 
and painters skulked away and painted *' bits.'' 
The sublimity of snow-peaks should underlie all 
our feeling for the lesser charms of Nature. Yet 
many people of considerable sentiment still shiver 
and skulk before these great white thrones of the 
Almighty. But yet not every one who would, can 
be a pilgrim to Mecca. Not every one can kneel 
at the holiest shrines of Nature. Let us be thank- 
ful to Mr. Church that he has brought the snowy 
Andes to us, and dared to demand our worship for 
their sublimity. 

When our mortal nature is dazzled and wearied 
with too long gazing on the golden mount, where 
silence dwells and glory lingers longer than the 
day, we may descend to the Arcadian levels of the 
Llano at the " Heart of the Andes.'' See how the 
plain slides, smooth as water, carrying sunshine 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 351 

up to the stooping forests at the left-hand base 
of the central mountain. On the reaches of this 
savanna is space and flowery pasturage for flocks 
and herds. Llamas may feed there undisturbed 
by anacondas. No serpent hugs ; no scorpion 
nips ; never a mosquito hums over this fair realm. 
Perpetual spring reigns. If the Arcadians wish 
perpetual summer, with its pests and its pleasures, 
they have only to mount a mule and descend ; the 
torrid zone is but a mile below. Life here may be 
a sweet idyl ; and the great mountains at hand will 
never let its idyllic quiet degenerate into pastoral 
insipidity. ' 

A sweep of this fair meadow-land, eddying 
along under steep banks behind the village, bears 
us unawares up steep acclivities, aiM we become 
mountaineers again, climbing the Cordillera. 

The Dome was an emblem of permanent and in- 
finite peace : — this central mass of struggling 
mount^ain, with a war of light and shade over all 
its tumultuous surface, represents vigor and toil 
and perplexity. The great shadow of the picture 
is opposed in sentiment, as well as in color and 
form, to the great light. 

Begin with the craggy hillock at the centre of 
the background, behind the village tower. It 
seems a mere episode of the life of the great 
mountain above it ; but observe how thoroughly, 
as in all Mr, Church's work, its story is told. 
Detail is suggested, and yet suppressed. The 



352 "THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

hill is in shadow, but not consigned -to- utter black- 
ness, and maltreated with coarse neglect. You 
may perceive or divine every line of linking sur- 
face, and every time-worn channel converging to 
the gulf in its front. You may feel that it bears 
up a multitudinous forest on its isolated crest, 
where fires that sweep the mountain moors, or 
*' paramos,'' have not reached. Level with this 
compact pyramid extends to the left a bench of 
rocky plateau, where we can gird ourselves for 
our sturdy task. Then, as we toil resolutely up, 
we find that earth was not at play when this Ti- 
tanic mass was reared. Here are mountain upon 
mountain , crag climbing on the shoulders of 
crag; plain and slope, and " huddling slant " and 
precipice ; furrow, chasm, plunging hollow, que- 
brada and a^^ss ; solitary knolls, groups of allied 
hills, long sierras marked on their sheer flanks 
with cleavage and rock-slides ; conical mounds, 
walls of stern frontage ; myriad tokens of prime- 
val convulsions ; proofs everywhere of change, 
building, razing, upheaval, sinking, and deliberate 
crumbling away, and how new ruin restores the 
strong lines that old ruin weakened. Yet, with all 
this complex- action and episode, there is still one 
steady movement upward of this bold earth-born 
Hyperion higher toward the masterful heights, 
with stronger step and larger leap as he learns 
the power of sustained impulse, and mounts 
nearer and nearer the region of final mysterious 
battle in clouds and darkness, on the verge of 



" THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 353 

final triumph beyond the veil. Peace and light 
dwell upon the Dome. Here is a contrast of 
mystery and dim chaos; — yet no grim obscure; 
no shock of hurtling storms. The sun penetrates 
the veil, and the heights glow pallid-rosy. Over 
the edge, keen as a wave, of the topmost cliff, 
float showery mists of tender iridescence; then 
violet heights and rainbow-mists and wreaths of 
pale cloud fade together out of sight. 

Over all this central mountain play of color 
rivals infinity of form. Evanescent blues, golden 
browns, pearly violets, tender purples, and purple 
greens mantle delicately over its giant shoulders. 
If the Dome was a miracle* of light, this mountain 
is equally a miracle of light and shade. Gray 
forests clothe a narrow zone at its base. Then 
come the " paramos," the rocky raoors covered 
with long yellow grass, where fires have frequent 
course and drive the trees down into gorges far 
beneath their proper level, — then the rocks, all 
stained and scarred with time, and enriched with 
lichens and mosses. Over all these many-colored 
surfaces, air, pale or roseate, floats and deepens in 
every hollow. Aerial liquidness, tremulous quivers 
of light, rest on seamed front and smooth cheek 
Sunbeams rain gently down from the cloudy con 
tinent above. We know not where it is not sun 
nor where the melting shadow fades. And all 
whether sunlit slepe, or profound retreating abyss 
or sharp sierra, is seen through leagues of ether, 
a pellucid but visible medium. Forms become un 



354 " THE liEAET OF THE ANDES." 

defined, but never vague in this gray luminousnoss. 
The enchantment of beautiful reality in all this 
central mountain is heightened by the faint pencils 
of light striking across the void. And observe, as 
an instance of the delicate perception of truth that 
signalizes every portion of this picture, that these 
evanescent beams converge. Diverging rays are 
familiar to every one who has seen sunsets. Old 
Sol in the almanacs is a personage of jolly phiz, 
with spokes of light diverging from cheek and 
crown. But converging rays can only fall when 
the sun is, as in this case, behind the point of view ; 
and this disposition of light is a phenomenon com- 
paratively rare. A regard for such fine truths as 
this arms the artist with a panoply, and makes his 
work impregnable. 

No substitution of trickery for tactics could pos- 
sibly have drawn up this masterly array of moun- 
tain elements. It is thorough knowledge and 
faithful elaboration of detail that makes this cen- 
tral mass real, and not mythic ; a vast, varied 
pyramid of rock, and not a serrated pancake of 
blue mud set on edge. Mr. Church proves that he 
knows and feels grand forms, and the colors which 
pertain to them as inseparably as the hues of a 
diamond belong to the facets of a diamond, and 
that he is able enough, and diligent enough, to ex- 
press his knowledge and love. This harmonious 
contrast of sun and shadow, drag and glen, edu- 
cates the eye forever to disdain those conventional 
blotches of lazy generalization — vain pretenders 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 355 

to the royal honors of mountains — which cumber 
so many landscape backgrounds, and demand as 
much of the student as if he should be required to 
construct Hamlet from a ghost, the Tuileries from 
a tile, or Paradise from a pippin. 

A canopy of the lofty rain-clouds of this region 
overhangs the central mountain. We have already 
observed their shadows ; let us now analyze their 
substance, and note their effect. 

Western v/inds sweeping the Pacific catch dew 
from the thickets of palm-islands, and foam from 
breakers on the reefs that shelter blue lagoons, 
scoop handfuls from the deeps, where sunlight 
strikes like bended lightning, and tear away the 
stormy crests of surges. And as the winds hasten 
on in their hot journey, they play with their treas- 
ures of coolness, and find that vapor is a ductile 
thing, and may be woven into transparent fabrics 
of clouds, light, fragile, strong, elastic, and with 
all the qualities of dew and foam, sunny water, 
and the lurid might of angry sea. Such cloud- 
wreaths the warm ocean winds hold ready to fling 
upon every frigid slope of the Andes. No one of 
these aerial elements is wanting to the clouds over 
Mr. Church's majestic Cordillera. They have the 
shimmer of dew, and the bulk of the surge : they 
are light as a garland, yet solid to resist a gale. 
Flexible sunbeams can penetrate' this texture, and 
twine themselves with every fibre, and yet bluff 
winds cannot shatter them. Brightness and dark- 
ness flow and fuse together among their rims and 
contours. * 



356 "THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

These are not woolly clouds, nor fleecy breadths 
of woolliness ; not feathery clouds, nor brooding 
feathered pinions. They are not curls of animal 
hair, nor plumes of fowls. Only the morbid will 
be reminded by them of flocks of sheep, or flights 
of rocs. They are clouds made of vapor, not of 
flocculent pulp, or rags, or shoddy. They are no 
more like either syllabub or dumplings than Mr. 
Church's air is like lymph, his water like j^east, or 
his peaks like frosted plum-cake. Epithets from 
the kitchen or the factory are equally out of place. 
These are veritable clouds of coherent, translucent 
vapor ; — magical creations, because there is no 
magic in them, but only profound, patient, able 
handiwork guided by love. They are beautiful 
because they are actual clouds of heaven, and 
show that the artist knew the infinite life of clouds 
and the dramatic energy of their coming and 
going, eventful with shadow and light, and some- 
times with tears and dreary tragedies of storm, — 
that he has seen what wreathed smiles they have 
for sunshine, what mild rebuffs for boisterous winds, 
— seen their coquetries of flying and waiting, 
their coy advances, their wiles of hiding and peer- 
ing forth with bright looks from under hoods of 
gray. And having thus studied the character and 
laws, the use and the loveliness of these spirits 
of the "air, the Artist, knowing that he cannot 
better the models of Nature, has adopted them. 
Painting of natural objects must be imitation or 
mockery. A great artist studies to master type 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 357 

forms. When he has grasped the type, then he 
can construct individuals as he will, but any at- 
tempt to create new types results in inanity or 
caricature, in the deformity of feebleness, or the 
deformity of the grotesque. 

Nothing in the picture is more masterly than 
these clouds upon the Cordillera. See how they 
tlimb and cling to the slopes, how they bridge the 
hollows, and fling themselves against the opponent 
cliffs, how they trail and linger, as if to choose 
their bivouac for the night-watches. They do not 
sag ponderous and lethargic, nor droop in sorry 
dejection, weeping out their hearts because their 
backs are broken. Nor do they fritter away 
their dignity in a fantastic dance. They are elate 
and springy with eagerness through all their bril- 
liant phalanxes, and detach themselves with perfect 
individuality from the far-away sky and the dark 
mountain. They are naturally and rightly in their 
place, and give the needful horizontal, for change 
of line, after so much height, as well as the need- 
ful concealment and revelation of form. 

But the Llano at the Heart of the Andes, the 
village, the Montana, the cataract, and the inex- 
haustible charms of the rich foreground, invite us. 
Let us take at a leap the gulf on the mountain-side 
where a thread of cascade is faintly visible. We 
advance over the gradual slope behind the dark for- 
est, and notice the forceful quiet of that breadth 
of gray woodland in shadow, in the middle dis- 
tance, with its bold fronts of rock. 



358 "THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

Let us here pause for a moment. What have we 
done ? Where are we ? Let us review our moun- 
tain work before we go among the groves and flow- 
ers of Arcady. We passed first up the misty glen 
to the left under the purple precipices, — a stern 
gorge and a terrible, though now it look so fair. 
We beheld the Dome, and approached it reverently. 
We climbed its three terraces. We studied its 
impressive mass. We saw where its foundations 
were laid deep and broad, — the triumphant peace 
of its golden curves against the sky, — and found 
exquisite light in its shadows. We noticed the 
magnificent rolling line of the Cordillera where it 
cuts against the sky and meets the snows, — 
observed its varied color and form, and marked what 
a cloudy world it upholds on Atlantean shoulders. 
We have, in short, studied the Andes, Cordillera and 
Nevado, the region of animated clouds above the 
one, and the realm of sinless sky above the other. 
This is what we have done ; — what we have 
gained will appear when we come to review the 
whole picture. 

The woods behind the village are next to be 
studied. Half-way down, a bench of warm rock 
breaks the slope abruptly. The same formation of 
precipice appears that reappears in the walls of 
the cataract. Below this the woods radiate over 
the descent toward the hamlet, and forward toward 
the water. In all this multitudinous forest of the 
Montana, there is nothing of the gloom of the im- 



" THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 359 

penetrable vegetation of the fiery lowlands of the 
tropics. In this elevated valley vegetation assimi- 
lates to that of the temperate zones ; there is 
never any nipping check of winter ; the tree can 
develop its life without harsh discipline of frost, 
and grow without need of frantic impulse after long 
lethargy. Hence we are at home, and yet stran- 
gers in these woods. Our Northern comrades seem 
to surround us, but they have' suffered promotion. 
They wear richer uniforms and more plentiful dec- 
orations. Kindlier influences have been about. 
Downright perpetual passionate sunshine has edu- 
cated their finer spirit, and made gross wrappings 
of protective bark, and all ^eir organization for 
enduring cold, needless. It is a community which 
has been well treated and not maltreated, wisely 
nurtured and not harshly repressed. 

The student will recognize the constituents of 
these forests in the magnificent types of the fore- 
ground. I desire at present merely to call his at- 
tention to the healthy cheerfulness of their color, 
and the vigorous, but not rank, character of their 
growth. Down in the hot valleys, foliage sucks 
dank from the sluggish air, and, growing fat and 
pulpy, is not penetrated by sunlight, but only re- 
flects a hard sheen. Seen from above, lush greens 
preponderate. Few of the largest trees have 
leaves of delicate texture like our maples. But 
the groves across the midlands of the Heart of the 
Andes are gayer, as becomes their climate. And 
giving to them a higher degree of what they have, 



360 "THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

Mr. Church has dashed his magical sunshine in 
among them everywhere, in every glade and cleft, 
making the whole scope one far glimmer of tremu- 
lous scintillating leafage and burning blossoms. It 
is, as we feel, a countless grove, with many masses 
of thicket and careless tangles of drapery, such as 
we see on the left-hand foreground, and vistas of 
ambrosial gloom, such as open down the ferny d6ll 
on the right. 

By the skirts of this forest we come to the vil- 
lage. A city of citizens we should feel to be out 
of place here. Volcanoes may be suitable compan- 
ions for the turbuleni* abodes of men, as men now 
are. A melodramatic little Vesuvius, threatening 
when it is not outraging, always discontented, and 
often an insurgent malecontent, grumbling and bel- 
lowing, ''full of s6und and fury,'' a demoniac and 
revengeful being, — this is a fit emblem of a modern 
capital. But the solemn peaks of snow must stand 
among the giant solitudes. And yet, that we may 
not be quite deserted of human sympathy, the Art- 
ist has placed here a quiet hamlet grouped about its 
humble sanctuary. This is memorial enough of 
humanity, — we need not stand here bewildered as 
if we were its first discoverers. We have no un- 
easy sense of loneliness ^and exile. Brother men 
have lived and loved in this paradise. We do not 
require a crowd of minor associations such as help 
to glorify tame scenes of every-day life. Petty 
histories and romances are wanted to kindle fervors 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 3G1 

for petty places. Sentimental art demands ruins, 
and strives to " make old baseness picturesque." 
But the magnificence of Nature here can be felt 
without aid from the past. Historic drapery is not 
needed. Absolute beauty can be loved at first 
sight. To think our noblest thoughts, we go away 
from relics to solitude, to God, and to the future. 

There is poetic propriety, therefore, in this Tin- 
disturbing village sanctified by its shrine of faith. 
Men have not forgotten their conception of God 
at the Heart of the Andes, — the heart of the 
heart of the world, where its pulses beat hottest 
and strongest. And the Artist sets up his own 
symbol of faith in the church and the foreground 
cross, and recognizes here that religion whose 
civilization alone makes such a picture as his 
possible. A pleasant hamlet is this, with its reed- 
thatched huts, — here where life is so easy and 
goes a-Maying all its days. 

Divine repose was expressed by the Dome ; 
manly energy by the Cordillera. And now we 
welcome a graceful feminine element. Water is 
the fair stranger we are now to greet. We have 
been all the while aware of her brilliant presence ; 
and have not rarely wandered away from the 
rough hills to be refreshed by rainbow showers, 
and stirred with a sense of dancing motion. Now 
we may give ourselves fully to the river's bright 
influence. Forth from a sunlit spot it comes, as 
unexpected as if we had not seen its placid delay 

16 



362 "THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

above, where its pool attracted and fixed the vil- 
lage. It comes with snow memories in the foam 
of its rock-shattered flow. It curves with deep, 
clear fulness into an upper rocky basin. It gushes 
so firm and urgent against its walls that its re- 
flected edges are seen, to be heaped higher than 
the unchecked slide of its mid-current. One inch 
more in its angle of descent would send that 
whole smooth clearness flying into foam. But its 
strong speed does not spoil its mirror-like quiet- 
ness. It moves steadily on to its beautiful duty, 
and then suddenly — "the wild cataract leaps in 
glory.'' 

The river is transfigured before us. Motion 
flings itself out into light. Green water snows 
down in a glimmering belt of white. Every drop 
dashes away from every other drop. Each one has 
its own sunbeam. Diamond flashes join into jew- 
elled wreaths. Pearl and opal blend their soft 
tremors. Sapphire and beryl mingle with the 
strong glow of amber. And the wreaths inter- 
twine and float together, until the mid-whirl is a 
gemmy turbulence, a crush of foam and spray, and 
rays and rainbows. 

There is no sharp line to mark where calm slid- 
ing water is instantly transmuted into wild falling 
water. The fall becomes a fall without any harsh 
edge of precipice. We cannot define where the 
shadowy gleam above bends fleeter over the first 
ledges ; nor where the bend first breaks with 
spray, and spray thickens, and the curve passes 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 363 

into a leap, and the leap into a resistless plunge, 
and all the bends, curves, leaps, and plunges fling 
themselves together in joyful abandonment, thrilled 
through and through with sensitive tremors of 
graceful daring. 

As the cataract comes gushing forward rather 
than dropped in precipitous downfall, so it is not 
received on a flattened level of water below. 
Rocks break its plunge, and give it pause. And 
then this shape of beauty, disarrayed, but fairer 
thus, springs, not frantic or sullen, into a gloomy 
chasm, but. sweeps, a mist of sunshine, down 
behind an iridescent veil, upon the white splen- 
dors of its own image. It eddies with lambent 
lights along the warm cliffs, and then glides down 
the steps and rapids of a new career — on to join 
the Amazon. 

Serene sunshine fills the right of the gulf. On 
the left, where spray keeps the mosses of the cliff 
long and rich, is a flow of softened prismatic color, 
and the angle is filled with opalescent reflected 
lights from the sunny cataract. This is one of the 
most enchanting effects in the picture. 

The gleam of the Cataract recalls the snows of 
the Dome. The bending plunge of the one repeats 
the slow curves of the other. Across leagues of 
full distance, the ligh^ of the fall, secluded and 
subordinate, answers, like an echo, to the great 
dominant light. And observe also in the division 
of the cataract by its bold cliff, and in its parted 
cascade falling in dimness on the right, a reminis- 



364 " THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

cence of the Cordillera, and the dependent misty 
light at its summit. Such continuous effects sus- 
tain the dramatic unity of the picture, and show 
that one creative thought reigns everywhere. 
Observe again how the level of the basin below 
the cataract corresponds with the emphatic plateau 
below the mountains, — repose after power. No 
discomposure or weariness is anywhere possible. 
We are nowhere beaten back and debilitated by 
stern, rude heights we cannot climb. Slope and 
plateau and successive grades of ascent take us 
gently up from the lowest plane of blue water 
speeding toward ocean, to blue, illimitable space 
of sky. Step by step the eye is educated to 
comprehend the vast scope of the scene, yet no 
step is abrupt. There is always soine spot where 
the precipice breaks off into ledges, and where 
steeps pass into declivities. 

Before he comes to the complex beauty of the 
foreground, let the student make one more excur- 
sion over the large undulations and among the 
shady coverts of the central forest, — the Mon- 
tana of the Andes. Glows of approaching even- 
ing lie among the long shadows and fall across 
the glades. Not even where the dusky canopy 
of clouds shuts off sunshine can this become an 
austere woodland. Trees, of many-colored foli- 
age make play of light even in the unillumined 
spots ; and sunshine, streaming low and level, be- 
trays a wilderness of leafage and umbrage, stems 
and vines. 



" THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 3G5 

From these bright labyrinths we emerge again 
into open daylight. Here, above the basin, warm 
cliffs uphold a tablet where sunlight pmay blazon 
its last fond inscriptions. Other hieroglyphs are 
already there, - — the story of the rock's own life 
told in crevice, ledge, and mossy cleft, and the 
myriad traces of Time, the destroyer and renewer. 
As air above, so water below has pencilled its 
legend. Lapping ripples have marked levels of 
drought and freshet along its base. And the cliffs, 
doing their part in this interchange of bland influ- 
ences, send down their image to hang without 
heaviness ia the shimmering water. The still 
water reflects, as perfectly as the arrowy, shattered 
water contained, light. How full of mild splendor 
is this pool of Nepenthe I Into its amphitheatre 
the river leaps exulting. A maze of woven sun- 
beams floats above her bold repetition of feats done 
in her youth among argent snows. She springs 
out upon her own image, which falls before her, 
a column of white lustre lengthening over the un- 
dulations, only to break in the swift silvery bends 
of the lower rapid. And above this wavering 
image Iris floats within her veil of mist, and her 
bright hues shine through it. The cataract sheds 
prismatic tints upon the unsunlit cliffs, and the 
cliffs that are in sunlight shed radiance upon the 
air. The void is flooded with a glow of reflected 
lights. All about, trees stoop over the brink and 
tassel the precipices with tendrils and pendent 
branches. Delicious spot, which he who will can 



366 " THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

dream full of the music of falling water, as he 
sees it brimming with effulgence. It lies open 
before us, a lucent shell lined with imprisoned rain- 
bows, — a chalicp of dissolved pearl, — a flushed 
corolla, where the cataract rises like a white cone 
of vestal leaves just opening, — a pool of newly 
troubled water, where weary spirits may find heal- 
ing and lightness of heart. 

We come now to the right-hand foreground. 
Three specific typical trees project over the basin, 
• — a trio of comrades sustaining each other in their 
vanguard station, — unmistakable individuals, evi- 
dently not brothers. I have no names for these 
pioneers. Probably no arborist, complacent with 
offensive armor of Latin nomenclature, has pene- 
trated these solitudes at the Heart of the Andes. 
But no ungainly polysyllable could identify these 
trees more completely than do their distinctive 
qualities as here given. Midmost stands the stal- 
wart masculine tree, oak-like in its muscular rami- 
fication, and upholding a compact crown of plen- 
tiful leafage. Light flashes everywhere in among 
its leaves, catches them as they turn and gilds 
them, slants across them sheenily, pierces athwart 
their masses into the dim hollows and fills them 
with gleams, stands at openings of cavernous re- 
cesses in the dense umbrage and reveals their 
mysterious obscurity. Twigs and sprays bare of 
foliage, and showing that the crumbling away 
of soit beneath is telling upon the more delicate 



" THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 367 

member^ of the tree, strike forth and crinkle as 
they clutch sunlight. And yet there is no frivo- 
lous minuteness of detail in this masterly tree, 
leader of the trio, and its fellows ; although every 
leaf and spray and twig seem to be there, alive and 
animate. The Artist has here, as everywhere, 
produced his effect by the peremptory facts of 
form and color, without weakening precision by 
attempts to convey ambiguous semblances. Hence 
his tree is a round salient mass, but not a cactus- 
like excrescence, and a maze of leafage without 
being a blur or a mop. In signal contrast to this 
sturdy, erect outstander is the tree with depend- 
ing branches and delicate silvery-green foliage, — 
a tree of more elegance of figure and a mimosa-like 
sensitiveness of leaves, but vigorous ' and not at 
all shrinking from the forward and critical position 
which it holds. The third tree, the Lepidus of 
this triumvirate, keeps somewhat in the shady 
background, and leans rather toward the thicket, 
being of less notable guise and garb. His stiff, 
scanty leafage and channelled bark are entirely 
characteristic of the region. Each of these trees 
is not only a type in its form and foliage, but also, 
though less conspicuously, of the garden of smaller 
growth which, feeding on air, dwells on its trunk. 
Clustering luxuriance of boweriness belongs to 
the sheltered recesses, and does not inundate these 
foremost types. But each is a hanging garden, 
an upright parterre raising up to sunshine its 
peculiar little world of warm-blooded mosses, 



368 " THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

lichens, and tree-plants, sparkling over its trunk 
like an alighting of butterflies. The tropical sun 
loads his giants with his pigmies. Observe the 
rich contrast of the mound of vivid moss with the 
red trunk of the outermost tree. Each of these 
trees wears a splendid epiderm, but neither has 
had the leprosy, — an unpleasant malady which fre- 
quently attacks foregrounds. Mr. Church's trees 
are too freshly alive, and show that they digest 
air and water too healthily to suffer with any cu- 
taneous disease. A somewhat formal personage 
the leader of the pioneer trio may be, but his stiff' 
dignity is invaluable in this sybaritic covert, and 
to the picture, as giving determined perpendicular 
lines after so much level and slope. Behind this 
picturesque group, two companions of theirs come 
striding out of the dusky woodland, each a stand- 
ard-bearer of a new, unknown clan, and wearing 
new insignia of rank. 

Let us enter this delightsome pleasaunce whence 
they come. Sunshine streams in with us a little 
way, and leaves us for a spot it loves among the 
choirs of blossoms. So we wander on into ambro- 
sial darkness. And over us the trailers stream 
with innumerable tendrils ; — our firmament is a 
gentle tempest of gold and green, — a canopy of 
showering clouds of verdure, — a rain of wreaths 
and garlands. A cascade of bowery intricacy 
shoots down inexhaustible, dashing into flowers at 
its foot, and pouring a slide of sparkling greenery 
among the ferns toward the pool. The cope of 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 3G9 

forest overhead flings itself down to mingle with 
the floral coppices, and lianas bind the bright 
shower to the bright spray below. Just where 
the bosk thickens, a tree fern stands like a plume, 
waving us inward. Lesser ferfis carpet the vista, 
making a deeper, richer greensward than Northern 
climates know ; but this one is the pride of its 
race. Its prim gracefulness gains the charm of 
" sweet neglect'^ by the droop of its ripened and 
withered fronds, and by the delicate creepers 
which climb upon the scales of its past leafage. 
No plant in the upland tropical woods is more ele- 
gant than the tree fern. It surpasses even the 
palm in refinement of foliage, and its plumes be- 
come the substitute for palms in the elevated zones 
where the latter would chill and wither. Behind 
this fair, bending Oread, under overarching dark- 
ness, extends the gloaming mystery of the 
Montaiia. 

This vista of forest conducts us inward to a re- 
gion as doubtful and dim as the height of the 
Cordillera above, and contrasts with the open road 
on the left, guiding us up to the Dome. And 
when we have had enough of dreamy wandering 
deep in these bowers of Elysium, we may come 
forth and pluck flowers in the wondrous garden 
at the margin of the picture, — a maze of leaves 
and blossoms as intricate as the maze of vine- 
drapery above, or the maze of shower and rainbow 
at the mountain-top. The Artist has come with 
his hands full of tribute to Flora, and flung exuber- 

16* X 



370 " THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

ant beauty into this sunny, sheltered spot, where 
warm dewy airs, stealing up the river, bring sum- 
mer higher than its wont. Liberal as is the beauty 
here, there is no cramming, — no outlandish forcing 
of all possible and 'many impossible objects into 
an artificial clustering. Her6 there is simplicity 
in complexity, — order in bewilderment. Nor is 
this spot a glare of metallic lustres, and all aflame 
with hot splendors, or incarnadined with crimson 
hues. Peaceful colors govern here as everywhere 
in this home of peace. The feathery blue cymes 
of a plant which the Indians name ''yatciel'^ 
recall the quiet blues of the sky. White spires 
mingle with the blues. Below, the convolvulus 
strews its rosy-purple disks over mantling vines. 
A scarlet passion-flower, the " caruba,"- sparkles 
upon a garland of its own." Reedy grasses, start 
up erect. And lowest, broad juicy leaves, gilded 
upon their edges with the all-pervading sunshine, 
grow full and succulent with moisture from the 
stream. 

A perfect garden, — crowded with infinite deli- 
cacy and refinement of leaf and flower, — where 
there is no spot that is not blossom, or leafage, or 
dim recess where faded petals may lie, — where all 
seems so fair with these cloud-like creatures of 
white, these wreaths of azure bloom, and stars of 
scarlet, that this gentler beauty of earth almost 
wins us to forget the grander beauty we have 
known on the summits far away. And as we turn 
away from the glade, with a boon of sweet flowers 



*' THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 371 

in our memory, the last foremost objects that linger 
with us are two brilliant white blossoms, dashed 
with the same light which flashes in the cataract, 
and burns sublimely in the far beacon, the giant 
dome of snow. 

The sun, which loses no opportunity to pierce in 
unexpectedly anywhere among these scenes, be- 
loved of sunshine, achieves a weird effect in the 
shadows upon the rock beneath the morning-glo- 
ries, cast by the sprays and branches of a dead 
bush. And notice how these shadows have light 
in them, as shadowi# should, and are not dark like 
the unillumined hollows beneath the rocks and 
shrubbery. An admirably defined rock, part warm 
color, part purple shadow, part hidden by the 
caruba vines, leans against the bank, and aids in 
supporting it. 

In the middle of the lower foreground a large- 
leaved tree, bristling with epiphytes, stands out 
in vigorous persjDective. *The water below is half 
seen through its branches, and gains by an effect 
of partial concealment and a passing away out of 
the picture behind a leafy screen. 

The tawny slope of road in the left foreground 
leads us back to another tangle of forest. All the 
drooping, waving, tossing, prodigal luxuriance of 
the glade on the right is here repeated in half-dis- 
tance, — another denser maze, wellnigh impenetra- 
ble, in which we may discern the tree fern, now 
familiar, and may feel that our previous studies 



372 ''THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

have taught iis to know '' dingle and bushy dell '^ 
and "every bosky bourn of this wild wood from 
side to side." A vista, or cleft, across its intri- 
cacy, rather suggested than patent, tells us where 
the .path leads towards the Llano and the Hamlet, 
and the same vista opens to connect the nearest 
glows and flashes of white light with the radiance 
of the Dome. Forth from the forest the Eoad 
dashes bright as another cataract, and yet a warm 
surface of trampled earth. An infinite gemminess 
of flowers scintillates along its course ; — there 
seems no spot where the efe may not catch a 
sparkle. The same brilliancy gilds the rocks 
which support the road on the right, and over- 
hang the abyss. Nothing in the picture is truer 
or more marvellously salient in color and form 
than the purple crag, with sunlight broken by 
cross-shadows, lying upon its hither front. Noth- 
ing is more boldly characterized, and more full of 
fresh and vigorous feeling, than the sweep of the 
road, accurately and precisely defined in all its 
structure, and bathed in mellow sunlight and mel- 
lower shade. 

Just at the top of the ascent stands a cross, — 
a token of gratitude for labor past, and rest 
achieved. Such crosses are usual among the 
passes of the Andes, wherever a height has been 
overcome. The natives pause and repose, and say 
a thankful Ave, as the two figures in the picture 
seem to be doing. Their presence is a cheerful 
incident, and their bright pouches throw in a dash 



"THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 373 

of gay tropical color. To us also the cross, promi- 
nent against its dark background, has sweet sym- 
bolical meaning, sanctifying the glories of the spot ; 
and, as in the old saintly legends flowers sprang 
up under the feet of martyrs, so here a sponta- 
neoiis garland has grown to wreathe this emblem 
of sacrifice and love. 

Observe next how exquisitely the sloping side 
of the road toward the dim precipice on the left 
clothes itself with a mossy verdure, and how the 
moss thickens and streams down into the chasm, 
meeting the slender line of sapphire water that 
trickles from a crevice in the steep. Foremost of 
all the picture the Artist has set up his trophy in 
the broken shaft, — the stem of some ancient mon- 
arch of the forest. Upon this he has flung his 
last brilliant spoils. The scarlet orchis stands out 
like a plume from a tuft of other air-plants, a fall 
of draping creepers hangs from above, strange rich 
forms of plants cluster about its base, and, fastened 
by a fillet of large leaves, each distinct upon its 
own shadow, one burning white blossom gleams, 
midway the column, like a jewel upon an argent 
shield. Upon a branch just by, in bravery of 
lustrous green plumage, sits the "royal bird of 
the Incas,'^ and below gay butterflies twinkle. 
Through some cleft of forest, beyond the verge of 
the picture, one trenchant sunbeam strikes, and, 
falling upon this propylon shaft, seems to set upon 
the whole great work the sun's final signet of 
approval. 



^ 



374 "THE HEART OF THE ANDES." 

I have thus treated rapidly, and perhaps baldly,/ 
the signal facts of this picture. Its execution 
everywhere equals its conception. It is indeed 
many perfect pictures in one, — as a noble sym- 
phony bears in its choral swell a thousand hymns 
and harmonies. The lover of quiet beauty may 
here find solace, and he who adores supernal beautj"- 
has objects for loftiest worship. Yet so admirable 
is the dramatic construction of the work, that no 
scene is an episode, but each guides the mind on 
to the triumphal crowning spectacle, — every 
thought in the picture is an aspiration toward the 
grand dominant thought, the Dome of snow. 

" The Heart of the Andes " is in itself an educa- 
tion in Art. No truer, worthier effort has ever 
been made to guide the world to feel, to compre- 
hend, and to love the fairest and the sublimest 
scenes of Nature. It opens to us, in these ardent 
ages, a new earth more glorious than any we have 
known. What Beauty can do to exalt mankind is 
•as yet only' the dream of a few, but must some 
time become the reality of all. Toward this result 
Mr. Church offers here a masterpiece, the largess 
of his bountiful genius. Men are better and nobler 
when they are uplifted by such sublime visions, 
and the human sympathies stirred by such revela- 
tions of the divine cannot die ; — they are immor- 
tal echoes, and they 

*' roll from soul to soul 
And grow forever and forever." 

Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



